I was driving home from dropping my kids at school when I had a strange thought. Do old trees look at saplings and wish they looked like them? Do they remember the olds days of their youth and long to be there again? Do they look at the soft stem of a sapling and wish their bark and wood away? Do they see the flexible sapling swaying in the breeze and wish away their sturdy trunk?
In pondering this thought, my mind naturally brought belly dancing into the mix and I started comparing belly dancers to trees. I know my mind works strangely.
So here is the progression of this strange metaphor.
We don't stop to admire saplings. We find beauty in the large and gnarled trees. Large trees supply us with shade and shelter. We find more worth in a large established trees than in saplings.
I was looking at a tree in my backyard a few years ago and noticed it had stretch marks on it's trunk. I walked to other trees in the yard and most of them had them. It didn't make them any less beautiful or less useful. In fact it made them more interesting.
So if this is the way we think about trees, why can't we think of ourselves the same way?
As we get older, we become marked, larger, stiffer and more complex, just as trees do, and we tend to value our marked bodies as lesser the older it gets. Why do look at young people and wish for our youthful bodies back? Well, the answer is obviously that we have been indoctrinated into believing young is beautiful and old not. It's time to reprogram ourselves to find value in our bodies no matter how gnarled, large and marked they are.
Okay, so how does this all tie in with belly dance?
When I was at TODF earlier this month, someone said (and I can't remember who, otherwise I'd accredit them) that older dancers have wisdom in their dance that only comes with age. Young dancers are flexible and can do beautiful things with their bodies, and older dancers dance with wisdom that only comes with life experience. I love that. It shows how multifaceted belly dance is.
Sapling dancers are the future older dancers. They often bring innovation and set trends. Older dancers are like those large well established trees. Their bodies are marked by life. They are stiffer but can still sway with beauty. I find a lot of people don't appreciate the subtleties in their dance, the technique and wisdom in their expression. They all go crazy for the flash and energy in saplings.
So if people can admire large trees and find them beautiful, why can't they do the same for older belly dancers?
I don't consider myself an older belly dancer yet. I'm only 33, but my body bares the marks of pregnancy, anxiety and depression, and injury. I find myself somewhere between sapling and tree. I'm like one of those "teenage" trees that are starting to form their bark and stiffen up but aren't majestic enough to become the meeting place for young loves.