Data Connection Rejected: Are We Human or Are We Dancer?

While trying to IM with my BFF yesterday my Blackberry very rudely informed me that it "rejected" my attempt at connection! WHAT? How dare it! Freaking thing! Doesn't Mr. Blackberry understand I need my connection - that his rejection was felt on a very deep and personal level. Well okay, may not Blackberry personally, but it did leaving me thinking about what happens when our attempts at connection are rejected.

At this point in my life I am starved for connection. Since having open heart surgery I am no longer working. My central self-care routine (running till I puke) is not an option at the moment. I went from being a busy, successfully working mom to a slug in baggy sweats and oversize T-shirts to hide the bulges! Work and running centered me, grounded me, connected me to others and to myself. With them gone I became untethered and depressed. I have many friends who would understand and answer my call, "I need to connect!!" But the fear of receiving that message "data connection rejected" keeps me from opening my e-mail and sending those words to anyone in my address book. I have a list of excuses: they work, they have kids, they're too busy but the main reason is that fear of rejection. What is it about us that causes us to fear the most the thing we need the most?

I'm afraid of being laughed at. "Why is SHE calling me?" I know this to be an irrational fear. Nobody I know would say that to me. So what is beneath the fear or ridicule - showing weakness - admitting we don't just need help - we need people -to laugh with, cry with, celebrate and mourn with- we need connection. I know that I need to share my story about my heart surgery and I haven't fully done that yet with anybody. But I desperately need to share my story and have somebody "get it." To understand how scared I was. To understand why it is still mentally hard for me to run. I need to be understood as to how badly I feel my body betrayed me and how terrified I am that it will do it again and this time I may not be so lucky. That I still dream of my daughter, standing there in a beautiful wedding dress and she is crying for me…because I'm not there!

Then I think, maybe I am the one who is doing the rejecting? Maybe there are opportunities all around me to get the connection I need. Maybe the world is full of people who are receiving my message of "data connection refused" Sometimes I think it is harder to be the receiver that the transmitter. To offer a shoulder, a pat on the back, a "that will do, pig, that will do." We are not mere receivers or transmitters, but are we human or are we dancer(s)? When Hunter S. Thomson wrote that, we was referring to our innate behavior to perform, to be what others needed or expected us to be. And if we were always "dancing" were we ever really human? However I heard this song by The Killers on the way to take Zoë to dance lesson and it spoke to me in a different way. Are we dancers? Is there something out there greater than ourselves that when we allow it to work within us allows to achieve more, be more, lets us know the power of the universe at work in our lives….that allows us to dance…I wrote a list of 100 things I am grateful for today…things that make me dance…most of it is the people in my life. That is what makes us dancers. And it makes me realize that if I want to dance I need to receive connection as well as give it. What makes YOU a dancer? Right now it is the six year old tugging on my hand wanting to boggie down to The Go Go's We Got the Beat! Dance on!