You sense something is missing.
You are missing something you cannot define. You may be already trying different ways to solve this problem. For instance: traveling, shopping, going out for drinks after work, etc. having all this actions the characteristic of not leaving any fulfilling outcome, only things like photos of you looking silly in front of landmarks, lots of garbage that you don’t find place for, and a head ache next morning…
Things that are fulfilling include: writing poetry, playing music, practicing a martial art, anything that is goal directed to make you improve as a responsible, kind, aware and fully alive human being.
What is the goal of traveling to all the touristic places in offer and all other typical “things to do” and buy and/or consume?
It is one more accumulative strategy to give an answer to that sense of missing something with things, which will never do, since things by itself do not produce any “realization”, meaning: a sense of creative growth, of improvement, of an exploration of the self that allows a prospect of harnessing one’s potentials, developing and integrating them in a holistic manner, taking them into the direction where its full blossoming is achievable. A sense of thriving.
Although traveling seems not to be an objet of accumulation filling up our garages, and that is why it is one of the main choices today to have a sense of engagement with the present instant, similar to dancing, you are actually not committing to anything that last, so the fulfillment of tourist travel always requires of more traveling to more places you’ll soon forget, in order to keep you satisfied.
New marketing techniques try to repackage and rebrand these strategies of filling up this sense of missing something with things that do not need space in our garages, storage rooms and facilities. They are calling it “experiences”.
The responses from unaware naive costumers is the consumption of experiences, with the same empty outcome.
You sooner or later will realize, if you have to, if you want or need to, that an “experience” in life is not meaningful if it is modeled by an UX engineering technician who’s only aim is to get you pay to the corporation that employs him.
Playing music, writing poetry, painting, -if done not as a mere distraction, but goal directed to realize one’s potentials, improving life for oneself and all others around you- are similar enterprises. However, dancing requires the whole of your body participation, as well as your emotional and intelectual capabilities, training yourself in the capacity to be fully engaged and ready to give good answers to your present moment anytime, all the time.
Furthermore, Tango, being a social dance, allows you the exploration of yourself in the world with others, not only of yourself in solitude, as writing and painting do.
Playing music is social, but does not requires your whole body participation in the way that dancing Tango does.
The sense of thriving that Tango provides makes you come to realize that pleasure does not heave to be superficial, as our postindustrial culture proposes.
