Personal Growth Planet Blog

I’m just as surprised and angry about the ignorant and insensitive remarks Republican State Representative Pete DeGraaf of Kansas made recently.

As the Kansas state legislature attempts to whittle away at a woman’s right and support to make her own reproductive choices– including abortion– DeGraaf callously compared being raped to having a flat tire.

Perhaps he didn’t literally mean it.

Maybe he inadvertently chose an unfortunately cruel analogy to argue his position that insurance policies should not cover abortions for women who are left pregnant after a rape, unless of course they “plan ahead” for a rape pregnancy by pre-purchasing “abortion-only coverage.”

First of all, I don’t know what– if anything different than the usual– will happen on Saturday, May 21st. What I do know is that we humans (no matter what our religious beliefs are) tend to prepare for the worst.

Whether it’s preparing for a “Judgment Day” in which our “sins” will be counted up and assessed, preparing for our country’s economy to go belly-up or even preparing for the ones we love to let us down and leave us…

We humans seem to have a propensity to steel ourselves for an inevitable, horrible, gut-wrenching, carpet-ripped-out-from-under-us kind of life.

Drums beat a steady, almost hypnotic rhythm. Bodies move, twist, turn and twirl and intermingle with and among the beats.

Dancing…

In some form or another I have danced throughout my life. As a young girl, I took tap and jazz dance lessons. I can still remember kick ball changing my way across the wooden floors of Miss Lois’ dance studio.

Many bright points for me in the midst of my angst-filled high school years were singing and dancing in the show choir. And, for the past few years, I have taken belly dancing classes at a local recreation center. I am filled with gratitude for the patient and good-humored belly dancing teachers I have who, yet again, try to help me learn to undulate and shimmy.

I love balance. The image of the scales– for my zodiac sign, Libra– just seems so right. So harmonious, equal and fair. I’m all about things in life existing in perfect relationship to one another.

Perfect balance.

Aspiring to live a balanced life is really just common sense. We’ve all seen (and maybe felt) what having an excess of work can do to one’s personal life and body. We’ve all seen what an overabundance of recreation can do (one only needs to glance at the cover of tabloid magazines for ample examples of this).