Goofy Dance Therapy

I'm having a bit of a low point this past week or so. It doesn't help that I am sick with a nasty cough/cold, the weather refuses to warm up and stop raining, and living in China just doesn't seem like so much fun when all of the frustrations and hassles get to me. Some days I just want to drive my own car to a grocery store that will have deodorant and vegan margarine whenever I need it.

So I knew I needed to revisit some of the reasons why we are here. I find those reasons hard to articulate to others, but I know a guy who has explained it better that I could. Do you know the "internet sensation" of this guy doing a goofy dance in places all over the world? I love his videos - he has three of them now and they always make me smile. Actually, they always make me cry too, I'm not sure why. If you don't know what I'm talking about, here is his most recent video.



So the goofy dancer, Matt Harding, did an essay for This I Believe, an essay series featured regularly on NPR. It came out around this time last year, when we were packing up and getting ready to move to China. I think he explains why we are here and re-reading this has helped me feel better today.

That, and the fact that they turned the heated floors back on in our apartment because it is supposed to get near freezing again for a couple days.

Here is the essay:

Connecting to a Global Tribe

Matt Harding - Seattle, Washington

As heard on NPR’s Weekend Edition, March 29, 2009

I believe globalization is forcing our brains to evolve.

I’ve had the privilege to see a lot more of the world than anyone my age could reasonably hope to. A few years ago, on a backpacking trip, I made a video of myself dancing terribly in exotic locations. I put it on my web site. Some friends started passing it around, and soon millions of people had watched it. I was offered sponsorship to continue my accidental vocation, and since then I’ve made two more videos that include 70 countries on all seven continents. A lot of people wanted to dance along with me, so I started inviting them to join in everywhere I went, from Toronto to Tokyo to Timbuktu.

Here’s what I can report back: People want to feel connected to each other. They want to be heard and seen, and they’re curious to hear and see others from places far away. I share that impulse. It’s part of what drives me to travel. But it’s constantly at odds with another impulse, which is to reduce and contain my exposure to a world that’s way too big for me to comprehend.

My brain was designed to inhabit a fairly small social network of maybe a few dozen other primates—a tribe. Beyond that size, I start to get overwhelmed.

And yet here I am in a world of over six billion people, all of whom are now inextricably linked together. I don’t need to travel to influence lives on the other side of the globe. All I have to do is buy a cup of coffee or a tank of gas. My tribe has grown into a single, impossibly vast social network, whether I like it or not. The problem, I believe, isn’t that the world has changed, it’s that my primitive caveman brain hasn’t.

I am fantastic at seeing differences. Everybody is. I can quickly pick out those who look or behave differently, and unless I actively override the tendency, I will perceive them as a threat. That instinct may have once been useful for my tribe but when I travel, it’s a liability.

When I dance with people, I see them smile and laugh and act ridiculous. It makes those differences seem smaller. The world seems simpler, and my caveman brain finds that comforting.

I believe my children will have brains ever so slightly better suited to the vast complexity that surrounds us. They will be more curious, more eager to absorb and to connect.

And I believe when they look into eyes of strangers, what they will see before the differences are the things that are the same.