The Shackled Ballerina

“The chains which have held us are only the chains which we’ve made"

 - Jewel

Sometimes language sucks.  It doesn’t always have the capacity to say what we really need to say.  It can be frustratingly insufficient.  

I'm going to attempt to use language to convey two ideas that have helped free my mind. To illustrate my claim, I’ve created a short fable.  You can read it, but you don’t have to.  I’ll explain its significance before you read it as an attempt to allay any hasty impressions that the fable is totally dense and weird (thought you're perfectly free to still think that even after I try to explain it). 

The ballerina in the fable frees herself from her chains simply by doing two things: suspending judgment and suspending telos.  To suspend judgment, one must recognize that we can only affirm the values that we believe in and realize that we have absolutely no right to judge another human, because we have not created them.  They must also realize that we have more in common than in difference with everyone we meet.  Telos is a greek term that means the end term of a goal-directed process.  In other words, telos is what we strive for.  A problem arises, however, when we forget to thrive while we strive.  A teleological suspension would thus mean fully embodying each moment to our fullest capabilities.  It would mean living for the present instead of living for the future.  

The ballerina (who has presumably lived a very light, easy, graceful life until she was cursed), has been shackled by her own tendencies to judge others and to live for the future. She frees herself from her first chain only when she pauses in front of a man whom she had always regarded as creepy and inferior, but finally recognizes herself in the man. A wind blows through both characters to suggest that the universal currents of life flow through us all, connecting us inseparably.  Tellingly, the man sells marbles, which have extremely dense histories and stories of their own that have led to their intricate designs. The ballerina realizes that beneath the quiet man’s crooked stare lies a story and a life, similar to the life of a marble, or, perhaps, to her own.  

Her final fetter (or shackle) self-combusts as she awakens to the present moment. Suddenly, she feels everything for the first time and stops going through the motions of her day just to desperately get to nighttime, when she can be alone with her music. The marble can be said to have caused this awakening, because often when we make one of these movements of faith (judgmental suspension vs. teleological suspension) it will cause us to naturally move onto the other as well. 

The ballerina’s kinetic freedom finally restored, she struggles at first to embrace it.  It takes time to train ourselves to suspend judgment and to stop living for an end result.  Initially, she manages to transcend, but clumsily stumbles her landing.  When she says yes, or when she affirms all life, she has finally transcended life but has figured out how to embrace ephemeral life simultaneously.  

Like the ballerina, we can free ourselves from the chains which we’ve made.

Enjoy the fable.

.....

There once was a ballerina who hated her chains.  Shackled by a curse, she lamented her fate.  By day, she drug herself to the bakery to buy her family a loaf of bread.  By night she locked herself in her chamber and freed her hair from its angry bun. Alone, she listened to old ballet tapes, allowing music to drown her sorrows.  Each day she lived only for night, when she could shut out the world and allow for a familiar song to conjure a pleasanter image in her mind.

Today the quiet man with the crooked stare looked especially perturbed as she spotted him from a distance.  As a reflex, her eyes shot to the ground for the approach , always careful to avoid his awkward, prickly gaze.  She was sure he stood behind his insipid booth selling his silly little marbles and staring as always.  Each day when she passed him en route to the bakery she cringed a little, thinking if anyone could be less than she, it was he.

Suddenly possessed by an inexplicable force of curiosity this day, however, she stopped in front of his booth. Her eyes, startled, found his, and detected a kindness in his gaze. 

A sharp wind jostled her from behind and blew through her skin as if she were stitched of an open weave.  She watched the quiet man with the crooked stare wobble, too, before she carefully laid her hand on his shoulder. He smiled a crooked smile, and handed her his most precious marble.  Black and silver danced across this objectm coalescing to produce a sickeningly cool species of design. Expressing her gratitude for the treat with a gentle squeeze of his arm, she carried herself  off to the bakery.  

Within several steps, one of her shackles burst and lie conquered on the gravel beneath her.  An enormous weight having been lifted, she proceeded rather lightly toward the bakery.  

The marble awakened the girl; its absurd design challenged her senses.  In the bakery, she felt the warmth of the bread, smelt its pleasing aroma and sighed.  Walking home, she felt the pebbles under her feet, embracing the sensation.   Immediately her second and final chain dismantled itself, abandoning her ankle once and for all.  

She danced to her tapes that night when she took down her hair.  At first she rejected the joy because couldn’t think what to do with it.  She leapt into the air and stumbled, landing awkwardly.  When she finally said yes, however, she leapt and landed gracefully on her toes, forever grounded and risen all at once.

....