The Bean Ballet

I would like to share one of my favorite pictures with you:

That is a picture of my eldest daughter, my Beansprout, when she was just a Bean. Five years old. She took ballet that year, and this picture is from her recital. Isn’t she beautiful? Perfect, graceful, in the moment?

My favorite part of the whole picture is all the way on the right, that tiny hand you can just barely see.

Why is that my favorite part? Because, if you note the position that hand (belonging to the next girl in line) is in, you’ll see that it’s clearly not in the same position as the Bean’s. That’s because what you can’t see in this moment is that the Bean – the perfect, graceful, beautiful Bean – is doing not one thing she’s supposed to be doing.

There was a whole coordinated, choreographed dance planned for this recital. The Bean abandoned it almost immediately and just did whatever she wanted. She wasn’t nervous; she didn’t forget what the “correct” moves were. She just did whatever she wanted – she danced, the way her heart told her to.

And she was beautiful, graceful, perfect.

Let us all be like her, in all our moments. Find our own grace where we will, not where the lines of others tell us we must.