When Words Fail, I Dance

I feel a powerful force that wish to be liberated. To be expressed. To come into life. And I want to know how. More importantly, I want to know what this “force” is. For it drains me to the core that I am weakened by its imprisonment. Physically, I am well but my soul cries out for a voice. Perhaps I do not allow myself to listen. I fear what it may reveal.

On one hand, I wish it to materialise so I may hold it in my hand and release it as one would a butterfly caught in a spider’s web. On the other, my rational being bids me to stare it in the face and demand answers. The questions I cannot quite define. Not in words. So I am stuck. I wish for a dialogue but the words do not come.

It seems I am at a gridlock: my soul begs for release, my mind resists and so my body: a state of confusion. I lay awake at night wondering if this force comes from a place of profundity or frivolity. I cannot tell. I can, however, tell you how this inability to articulate into words makes me feel: frustrated, angry. Alone. Like an infant who, unable to communicate an immediate need in speech, cries and screams to be understood. But I am all grown up. So I cry inside and I scream in silence.

It seems even in the world of adults, the language of words and its mastery often fails to capture the spirit of our meaning. We say “I love you” when the love has gone. We say “I hate you” when all we feel is love. Words betray. They are simply too limited. Deficient. Ambiguous. The force we feel, the depth of our emotions is so powerful, vigorous and complex that expressing it in words only serve to weaken and confine.

I should know. In my profession where words are the currency used to inspire, influence and change people’s ways, the “message” – a string of words cleverly woven together – does not always stick. So it should not be so disappointing that in my private dominion, words fail to exact meaning to my conundrum.

Bitterly, I retreat into my cocoon hoping a brief respite from the world’s maddening pace will centre my thoughts and give rise to speech that frees the unexpressed.

It does not. What I find – buried and forgotten, shut down by a heavy artillery of “grown-up” issues – is a distant memory of emotional exuberance and physical rapture that once ignited my passions and inspired self-expression. There are no words or speech that colours its energy and brings it to life. It is pure flesh. Its language is the body. It understands only rhythm. It does not lie for it cannot. It speaks only truth. When the body takes over, the mind obeys and the soul delights. In the moment, I surrender to its power. Lose all inhibitions. Unshackle that which chains my being. In the language of dance, I give voice to my soul. I lay my thoughts to rest. I talk to my body. We make beautiful conversation.