plenty of time

My students and I are reading a story called MoMo by Michael Ende about a picturesque town of plenty of time. Like all good stories an evil rolls into town creating an evocative plot. The people get tricked into saving time by depositing it in a Time Saving Bank to somehow save for later. They get sold on processes to expedite and upgrade their life, their work and even play, saving it for someday.  This town went from being connected and human to being too busy, automated with walls and fastidious structures buffering them between each other. 

Lately I find myself navigating the worlds of banks, passports, new phones, signing up for things and even how I might streamline my own business. At the moment, I am everything in my business…the business manager, marketer, enrollment, relations, artistic director, choreographer, teacher, dance artist, front desk and the person who mops the floor.  This year, things had to get really simple, old timey, person to person, one step at time for me to do it all. Six months in, I wonder should I hire someone or pay for some fast performing system to do some of these pesky things? If I do that, will it make me more efficient with more people, more professional? Will I somehow be winning at my work with more portals, systems, likes and follows or just less touchable and reachable? 

I rushed my passport through a service thinking I was saving time and in the end with all their technology, systems and secret passages, an error was made and then it did not come. Well, it could have come if I paid $700. Maybe I could have fixed it but then I needed to press one, then two, then wait in a queue only to find that if I make a portal I will talk to no one and type a request to a robot on the other line that can only answer certain questions and unfortunately not mine. In the end, I simply called the secretary of state and a real human after real human helped me every step of the way. In fact, I picked up my passport yesterday and the people behind the windows at the office collectively cheered me on to my latest adventure. 

And the other day one of my three year old dancers brought me red roses and a card thanking me for being her teacher. Her tiny hands etched her love in her name, Tova. Her mom as I have gotten to know over the front desk squeezes my hand saying thank you, we can’t wait to see you next session and best wishes on your journey. 

These kinds of connections are what I truly live for and what aligns so pristinely with the purpose and love in my heart.  I would spend my life tirelessly preserving these precious bits of humanity.These moments at the end of the day are the ones that move me, the ones that make me feel like I am winning, like we are all winning. This story, like all the ones we have brought to the stage over the years, is nudging us and making us step back and think, why this story now and what are we supposed to learn here?  And so I wonder, I touch, I create, one step at a time…I can’t wait to see what we find.