The Dance of Love and Hate

All life is a dance.  We choose a partner (or series of partners) and begin the intricate pattern of steps. If it is a good match, we compliment one another.  As one takes a step forward, the other moves back.  There is a comfortable synchronicity when both are in harmony with one another.  A bad match is when both partners move in opposite directions at the same time. 

A dance instructor shared with me that the best, most fluid, dancers anticipate the other’s moves and move with them.  These are the pros.  They seem to just skate across the floor.

There are some, I learned, that continually vie for the spot of ‘leader’.  In that dyad, the dance more closely resembles a wrestling match than a rhumba.

I strongly suspect, though, that all dancers experience times when they feel an urgent deed to break out of the set mould.  The follower becomes frustrated and wants a chance to lead.  Or, the leader needs some relief from the onerousness of leading.

This is the dance of life.  It is a series of punctuated moments of progression and regression; of love and hate, proximity and distance.  In every love relationship there is movement toward deeper, more mature love and, then, withdrawal.  One psychoanalyst (Monica) believes that we all do this rhythmic dance in order to preserve ourselves, protect our fragile ego.

 Hopefully, the movement forward will always be more progressive than the steps taken backing away.

Over the past few years incredible progress has been made between Israel and the Palestinians.  Who would have thought that even a tenuous peace was possible after so many decades of bile and hatred?   It was not so long ago we viewed each other as demons.  Now we look at one another with hope.

Who would have thought that Birmingham Alabama would have a black mayor?

Who could have imagined rapprochement with our former Cold War enemies?       

Or reconciliation in Northern Ireland?

Progress does not come without the possibility of regress.   “Two steps forward, one back,” so to speak.  If this backward step is a necessary step for movement toward a greater, more secure peace we will mourn our dead and then celebrate the living.