What don’t you do any more that you used to enjoy? For all the things that I do that I enjoy, there are other things that have fallen by the wayside – some unnoticed, some because I get into various ruts now and again. I know I’m not alone in this. Some of it is just having limited capacity at any given time to do all the things one may want to do. Some of it is determined by the resources at one’s disposal.
A woman I know has a baby grand piano in her living room that has been unturned and untouched for well over a decade. She played the piano throughout college. It may have been the demands of young motherhood that made her stop playing. Being a young mother made her drop out of college at the beginning of her senior year and enter into a short-lived marriage. But now that her children are well-grown, I wonder what keeps her from playing.
I ask these questions of you and of myself:
What don’t you do anymore that you used to enjoy?
Why did you stop doing it?
When did you stop doing it?
What would it take to get you started again?
I know adults who know how to swim, sail, sew, skate, make furniture, sing and play instruments who don’t do any of those things now. While they/we are busy, they/we aren’t all that busy to find ourselves mainly doing the necessary tasks of life.
Why are we like this?
Sometimes what one intends as a short hiatus turns into a permanent absence from one’s talent(s), interest(s) and skill(s).
I don’t have skill in sports or a talent in music although I wish I did. I do have a love for dance. From square dancing in grade school in the winter months when it was too cold to play outside resulting in boys and girls square dancing together, to the modern dance classes I took in my last year of high school, to the nightclub dancing I did in my 30s and 40s, I have always loved dancing. “The music sweets me so, ” declares the granny in The Dancing Granny, an African folktale written and illustrated by Ashley Bryant.
When did dressing up on a Saturday night to Dance! Dance! Dance! fall out of my life?
Why did I let it go? (Was it the promise I made to myself that I wouldn’t be the old broad in the club?)
Do I get it back?
Note: On the other hand, I do I have a friend who is taking piano lessons now, having always wanted to take them but never getting to when she was younger. She is taking them for the sheer pleasure of being able to create music for herself.
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Bor-ing,Bles-sing…
You are so right. For the last ten years or so, I have been on a mission to take up all the things I regretted putting down…my next is wood carving, wood sculpture, stone sculpture.
We stopping putting our needs first, we get lazy, we are scared of failure or that we actually may enjoy it. We make excuses and choose to sit back and grow old that much quicker. I don’t know but you are right. And you need to dance even around your house. This minute!
I danced twice last weekend. First at a friend’s cookout. Grabbed my husband and made him dance even though we were the only ones doing so. Second at a nightclub. We actually went out and danced about 5 songs in a row.
Felt good. Plan to continue regularly.