Barbara Gordon’s I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can has been coming to mind a lot lately in this season of impending holidays, impending deadlines. Living in this fast-paced world, a world where material success is the ultimate measure of happiness and where the number of expectations that we’re able to juggle simultaneously is a sign of our strength, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. More importantly, it’s easy to forget that we’re human. It’s easy to forget that what we’re all in need of is time, that is, space for unmediated growth. Instead, we run and we run and we run, never once questioning what it is we’re chasing and why the race is so important in the first place.
What’s valuable about Dancing, among many other things, is that author Gordon has given herself the chance to slow down and write honestly about this unending web most of us unconsciously allow ourselves to get caught up in. What is this manic motion? What is this constant need to be better, faster, shinier? Why is there never an “enough”? In reflecting on her own struggles with these questions, Gordon gives us all a chance to breathe.
What’s more, Gordon is brave. She confronts something insidious, her very life-orientation, her very way of relating to the world. She dissects and deconstructs everything she’d ever known previously. Gordon’s example invites us all to stop blindly assuming we’re always where we should be, heedlessly consuming the things society tells us we ought, and subconsciously presuming that our life is filling in the way that’s right for each of us. She gives us the inspiration to step back from the dance that is our lives for even just one precious moment and reflect on what it is about dancing that we love most. She encourages us to dance for that, and nothing else.
Praise for I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can:
“Spellbinding seems too mild a word.” –Detroit Free Press
“Gordon’s story rings with authenticity.” –Washington Post
“I can hardly remember the last time I stayed up half the night because I couldn’t stop reading. But that’s what happened with I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can.” –Chicago Tribune
I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can, written by Barbara Gordon. Re-released this month by Moyer Bell, a division of Beaufort Books. Available now in bookstores across the nation.
Tags: Barbara Gordon, Busy Lives, I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can