The Inspired Soul
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“Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.”
— Miles Davis
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“Gillian is a seven-year-old girl who cannot sit in school….
One day, Gillian’s mother is called to school.
The lady, sad as someone waiting for bad news, takes her hand and goes to the interview room.
The teachers speak of illness, of an obvious disorder.
Maybe it’s hyperactivity or maybe she needs a medication.
During the interview an old teacher arrives who knows the little girl.
He asks all the adults, mother and colleagues, to follow him into an adjoining room from where she can still be seen.
As he leaves, he tells Gillian that they will be back soon and turns on an old radio with music.
As the girl is alone in the room, she immediately gets up and begins to move up and down chasing the music in the air with her feet and her heart.
The teacher smiles as the colleagues and the mother look at him between confused and compassionate, as is often done with the old.
So he says: “See? Gillian is not sick, Gillian is a dancer!”
He recommends that her mother take her to a dance class and that her colleagues make her dance from time to time.
She attends her first lesson and when she gets home she tells her mother: “Everyone is like me, no one can sit there!”
In 1981, after a career as a dancer, opening her own dance academy and receiving international recognition for her art, Gillian Lynne became the choreographer of the musical “Cats.”
Hopefully all “different” children find adults capable of welcoming them for who they are and not for what they lack ”.
— Nankuru Nai Sa
I think it was Jung who said that being who you are is a privilege of a lifetime. That cryptic comment indicts our culture, our educational system and the mindset of the trusted people who raise us. We are not encouraged to follow our own calling. Some of us are punished because we can’t or we refuse to fit in.
