On Sunday afternoon, I was lucky enough to be one of about 6000 people to go and watch Jeremy Loops play at Kirstenbosch Gardens in Cape Town. I discovered his music a little later than most I think, and I have my brother to thank for introducing me to it. I really enjoy the cheerfulness of his sound and find it rather inspiring to listen to.
While I was watching and listening and bopping along, I found the general bonhomie of Jeremy Loops to be quite reminiscent of Johnny Clegg and it made me think of how they are quite similar. Not necessarily in sound but in Spirit and Soul. The fact that they are Proudly South African. Their love and generosity of spirit which oozes like sex appeal and how they both manage to make you feel uplifted with their music. I found the parallels between them rather uncanny, and even though we have many fantastic SA bands, these two shout African Spirit. At one point in the show, Jeremy was doing a sort of side-wards leap, which completely brought to mind, Johnny Clegg’s infamous African dance jump. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to see that even in this generation we have Muso’s who feel the Ubuntu-ness of our country and they bring it to us with love and generosity.
And all this thinking brought about an ‘aha’ moment, of how we create our own magic!
Often, we look outside ourselves for validation, from people we know and trust, from strangers who we don’t, from the media, from parents, from our culture, from anything but ourselves and while validation from an outside point of view is great, because we see it as ‘I am on the right track’ I think that if we are validating ourselves from the inside out, it is more powerful. Which means that we can pretty much take ourselves wherever our dreams may steer us. Granted not all our dreams come true, but if we feel validated from the inside, from ourselves, doesn’t that give us a better chance to try. To aim higher than we are used to , and by that, I don’t necessarily mean getting rich, that may be a by product of aiming high, but from the inside out, challenging ourselves to get out of the comfort zone of What Should Be to What Could Be and being truly happy with who we are. Blemishes and all.
Which then got me pondering how would we validate ourselves? Does it not still require a degree of outside validation to kick start ourselves into believing that we are kind, beautiful and grateful human beings. Does it not sometimes require an outsider looking in and seeing your soul to help you begin to believe that actually, I am Ok, I am doing Ok and that is Ok? I think that we all could do with a jolt of positivity, especially if life is up to its usual tricks and has thrown one a curve ball, which as we know curve balls have a high probability of making us doubt our decisions, our feelings and we get swept away on the dark cloud of self loathing. And sometimes we DO need that outside validation to help us remember that we are human, and we are beautiful, even with our scars.
And that long train of thought, then brought about the fact that WE CREATE OUR OWN MAGIC. With or without outside validation, it is what we do to keep ourselves grateful, to keep seeing the beauty in the every day, the million minutia of our days that we are present for, the smile to or from a stranger (which is hard, yes, I have and do try…!) which enables us to create that which we love. It is as simple as making a decision and sticking to it, and if we don’t stick to it, we acknowledge that we haven’t and if it is something that is important to ourselves, we try again and again and again until we succeed and if it is not so important, then we Leave It Behind.
So, I have decided to experiment with this thought particle and see if we as Pilates teachers – who see clients every day and see the changes, and the abilities and the beauty, even if the clients don’t – could start the validation process in these same clients and begin a metamorphosis on negative self talk and self belief. To prompt their own validation of who they are. For them to believe what we see. To mirror their beauty, their strengths, their positivity and to show gratitude for all that we are able to do and be.
In a nutshell, will we be able to kickstart the creating of their own magic by creating our own?