Do you ever find yourself “outside of yourself”? Where exactly does the locus of your reality reside? Is it fixed or mutable and do you have some degree of agency as to it’s position?

It’s an odd phenomenon to notice just how much of your perspective originates from the inside out when some scenario or sequence of events turns the tables and you find yourself on the outside looking in.

Any number of circumstances can cause your script to flip. You find yourself interacting with a new group of people. You travel somewhere unusual or unfamiliar. Distant family members come to visit.

Perhaps it’s all of the above! When you’re in your own groove, in familiar surroundings, going about your business, it’s as if you’re in the comfortable drivers seat of your own consciousness.

Something or some combination of factors comes along to upend your apple cart and suddenly you feel like Alice after going through the looking glass.

Seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes isn’t quite the same as self-consciousness. Expanding your perspective doesn’t have to involve fear, anxiety, or discomfort.

Sometimes it’s as simple as realizing you’re in a different role or that you’ve arrived at a different state of mind or stage of development than what you are used to.

The passing of your parents is a big one. While they are still walking the earth with you it’s as if you’ve got a familiar handrail to reach out to. Once they are gone, you have to develop a new sense of balance.

Likewise if you have kids. The thing about offspring is that in the grand scheme of things, they really aren’t kids for long. While you are busy ‘adulting’, they are rocketing through the ages and stages of childhood, adolescence, teenage years on into young adulthood and beyond.

If all goes well, they arrive in the world of grownups on their own terms and return to you almost as peers. It’s at this point that you might find yourself getting a glimpse of your own self through their eyes. Outside looking in, indeed.

That’s where I’m finding myself this week. My two daughters are a generation apart, appearing in my world at entirely different reels in my life’s movie. Being 18 years apart, and residing on opposite sides of the planet, we’re not often in the same place at the same time.

Thanks to a serendipitous series of circumstances, they are both with us here in France at the moment. When my older daughter, the Melbourne-based creative wunderkind at a global technology firm made plans to visit, I booked my younger California-based high-school-aged daughter a ticket to be here as well.

Touring them around our new home here and exploring our neighborhood is like having my seat of consciousness shift to an entirely new location. Introducing them to our life in France is to see it with new eyes myself.

My metaphor for ‘conscious dance’ has always been “movement towards greater awareness” so this dance of far-flung family connection has been just that. I’m so grateful and full of love to share our world here and welcome them to it!

When the dust settles from our sojourn here in the country and our busy weekend in Paris, I’m guessing we’ll all have a new and broader perspective on just who we are and our place in the world.

Seeing something through your own eyes is one thing. Sharing things as an ambassador is another. Kind of like the difference between participating in a workshop, or leading one. It’s funny how life is like a dance floor!

Tout le meilleur jusqu’à lundi prochaine!

M+

Mark Metz
Director of the Dance First Association
Publisher of Conscious Dancer Magazine