| The Lord of the Dance |
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The other evening, we went with a group of friends to the Coleshill Town Mayor's Ball. The evening consisted of a sit-down meal followed by ‘The Ball'. Well, not really a ball, as there were no waltzes, tangos or fox-trots. Instead we were dancing the night away to the sound of an ABBA tribute band. Obviously just my thing. Now I am not best known for spending the night at a disco or for that matter at a formal ball. I didn't learn to dance as a teenager and my attempts since at ballroom dancing have met with mixed success - I can manage a basic waltz and that's about it. As for rock and roll etc, again, that's not something I ever really wanted to do. But needs must. So now, on occasions like this I join in, but on my own terms. And I have to confess that I am one of those who does not simply rock from one foot to the other and make rather vague arm movements. I am more your John Travolta type. Really. Now why is this? After all, I could simply go for the quiet life, although clearly I'd need ear-plugs really to achieve that. I'll tell you the reason. It's a low boredom threshold. To spend the evening doing the same very limited movements is not possible for me. If I am to take part, then I like to let my movements take me where they will - as long as they don't injure someone-else, obviously. The same problem exists for me with regard to ballroom dancing. The limited range of movements open to an amateur is very restricting. And we men don't even get to show-off fancy clothes. As for line-dancing, don't even mention it! And the reaction I get to my freeform dancing? Well actually it's quite good. Although I decide on my moves as I go along, I have learned to signal them quite well to my very brave, ever-vigilant partners. I actually had ladies offering to dance with me. In fact so much so, that I couldn't get off the dance-floor for most of the evening. So I must be doing something right - either that or it was just well-disguised pity! Now, although the moves have an apparent spontaneity, they do not come totally out of the blue - although my wife is not entirely convinced of this. I have a selection of basic moves to which I add things as the fancy takes me. They are not random events, but come naturally out of the previous movements. But neither are they easily predictable, because the huge quantity of variables means that it is far too complex for an observer to know what is coming next. Even I only know a few moments beforehand what my reaction will be to the combination of the music, my partner and what space I have to dance in without causing someone actual bodily harm. In life generally, it can sometimes seem that other peoples' decisions have come out of the blue, but I do not think that any of us wish to think that our lives are really based on random choices, the roll of a dice. If, though, our choices are not random, then they must flow from what has gone before. What we call ‘Freedom of choice', for all its libertarian promise, must then inevitably be a part of a sequence of causes and effects. But it still produces results which are for my benefit, because that is how ‘I' work. And so if my choices are not as free as I would like to think, what is the problem? Why would I want to do other than that which is in my best interests in the widest sense? And the 'widest sense' of course includes acting morally*. But we may feel that if our decisions were indeed just the outcome of a chain of causes and effects, then life would be very dull, the equivalent of forecasting sunshine for the Sahara. However what may appear to be just an inexorable sequence of events can be, and is, modified by the ‘unpredictable' interactions we have with others and the extraneous information available to us. And this really is where a low boredom threshold comes into its own - if we consciously keep looking for new experiences, new information and reading and listening to other peoples' opinions, if we think things through more rigorously, then the decisions we will make will inevitably reflect that new thinking. We will change. Predicting the choices we shall make in years to come will be more like forecasting the weather for Britain - impossible! And so it means that our lives can be lifted out of the rut that they can otherwise get into. We shall be able to avoid mentally just rocking from one foot to the other in time to the rhythm of the background noise of life.
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