Openness in work

by M.S. Choi

• Adapted from my Medium article: https://moonsoo-choi.medium.com/openness-16d625e11124

  I find it perennially impressive how early ballet trainees start their dancing tenure (and, yes, my dancing is graceless). Many commence at the age of seven, or even five — and the age of ten or twelve is often considered too tardy.

But how many of them get selected as the main swan in the Swan Lake? Clara and Fritz in The Nutcracker? How many of them have the resilience to brace through a series of never-ending training sessions and recitals, often carried with biting remarks and criticisms from their coaches? A study shows that a meager 10% of dancers eventually go onto become professional dancers — and only a handful of those dancers can make a living from dancing alone.

  Many young trainees — once starry-eyed and bushy-tailed — eventually succumb to this harsh reality, and ultimately embark on a different career path.

What was once everything to those trainees, ultimately fades away as an excursion of the past.

But it doesn’t mean ballet is no longer part of those trainees, just because it is no longer their whole.

In fact, deviating away from dancing opens doors to other aspect to life. “While you sculpt, you talk, and they told me how hard they have to work in order to perform,”

I see that many of us are fueled by our visions. But how can we be driven by our visions when we do not have a clear picture of our visions? We unknowingly sculpt a narrow, pigeon-holed vision of what we think we would like to achieve and who we think we want to become. Our lenses through how we see the world are tinted yellow — or rose red, violet, teal, or your favorite color – without us knowing it.