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Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Timeless Tuesday ~ My Friend Nat

I got a note from my good friend Nat this morning. She writes, "Today I have been teaching for 60 years, some form of exercise and dance. I am 72 years old and married to the same man 52 years. It kinda sounds like I don't give up easily."

I like to think of myself as the kind of person who doesn't give up easily either. I adopted her long ago as one of my personal heroes.


I think of Nat as a teacher of, or maybe more of an inspirer for the movement arts - ballet and other dance forms - and she's taken up yoga in more recent years. That's one of the most inspiring things about Nat -- she's never afraid to try something new. When you spend time with Nat, you just want to move, move, move. She makes you unafraid to tap your toes, wiggle your hips, stretch your arms out wide and up high.

I miss living close enough to hang out with her in person, but she continues to inspire me from afar.

“You’re never going to learn it all, and you’re never going to be as good as you want to be. So you just keep trying. That’s what dance is all about.”
~Nat S.
from an article I wrote about Nat in Dance Teacher Magazine in 2003
It's probably a pretty apt description for life in general, as well.

2 comments:

Sandra Dodd said...

Good quote of yours! I like it.

Cool about Nat's tenacity, too. :-)

Cap'n Franko said...

I'm kinda of a perfectionist. I always wanna be able to learn a skill *now*, instantly and get frustrated when I can't. My primary flying instructor used to twist the old saying and tell me: Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

I took that to heart. If it's really worth doing, just keep at it, no matter how inept you are at the start. Or in the middle. Or even after a VERY long time at it. I know one guy who took several years and 300 hours of instruction before he finally passed his FAA checkride and got his pilot's license. Usually it takes about 50-75 hours. But he wasn't afraid to keep doing it badly because he loved it. And it was worth it.