The Courage to be Disliked
A dear friend once told me, after a backlash from an old friend who´d turn her back on me for no apparent reason:
-You´re inflammable, Joana. Your presence triggers people - not always in a good way.
I´d just decided to move to Egypt, leaving family, the beginning of a successful career already established, boyfriend, and everything that I knew behind. My then friend decided that was unacceptable.
-Who do you think you are? - She´d yell at me, deranged, with two piercing eyes.
I´d heard comments like this since I could remember. It´s not like I did something on purpose to provoke, to be out of the box, to "be different". I was who I was and that, in itself, seemed to shake the depths of the earth. It´d trigger, annoy, and disturb the ones who surrounded me.
Year later, that same friend decided to stop talking with me altogether because, and I quote, "I want to be an Oriental Dancer and I can´t be in your shadow. The reason why I´m not successful in this field is you."
She never spoke to me, again. She didn´t succeed as an Oriental Dancer, either. It turned out I wasn´t the reason why she couldn´t succeed. Go figure.
Having grown in the middle of a cultural - explosive - cocktail; surrounded by Portuguese, Spanish, Gipsies, and Africans from Portugal´s ex-colonies, I knew what dealing with difference meant. I´d been surrounded by it since I could remember and I couldn´t be bothered. I thrived in it; I loved it.
Despite the fact that I lived surrounded by different people, colors, cultures, languages, religions, and mentalities, an environment where everybody was odd, or unique, in his/her own way, I felt the sting of "standing out". Of not fitting. Of daring to be different.
I was the white girl who did Classical Ballet and studied Music in the middle of a problematic neighborhood and school; there were drug and violence issues in the street but, at home, I was a part of a typically lower class family with peasant origins and old-school values raised by a mum who hated the church and, in particular, priests; I had my own gang and could be a bad-ass, when required, but I was also an excellent student; the birthday parties I participated in were filled with African music and food but, at home, we´d listen to "Fado, the Portuguese national music, and we´d eat veggies sent by our peasant grandparents; vacations were spent in the south of Spain; the Gipsies in our street - there was a Gipsy camping site in our backyard - asked my parents, day in and day out, if I was, by any chance, one of them. A Gipsy.
I stood out in the middle of this hot-big-mess. Not only because there were differences separating me from the folks who surrounded me but because I had the guts to be myself.
Me, as a little Chewbacca
Years later, when I moved to Egypt to start my career, I became known in the savage Cairo dance market as "the difficult one".
- She´s the best but...she´s "difficult". - I´d hear my musicians reporting, backstage, and asking me (without asking me) to - please, please, please - lower my gaze, be like everyone else, and adapt. "Adapt".
Although I was kind, educated, respectful, professional, and honest in all my dealings, it seemed there was something essentially wrong with me. For a while, I wondered what that was. Eventually, I got it: I didn´t fit the mold.
I refused to play the corruption, the mafia, and the prostitution game; I refused to dance what others wanted me to dance; or to behave as they wanted me to behave. I dared to have an identity, values, a mind of my own, and a life that was mine, and only mine, to create.
Big bosses who´d tried to sleep with me and failed, called me "savage".
Empresarios who´d want to sell me as the new toy to their pimping clients - who´d, in return, open the doors to the Egyptian 5-stars entertainment industry to me - and whom I´d sent to hell, called me "stupid".
Men who´d ask me to "talk softly to them" and abide by the rules of Egyptian society, rules where women are men´s propriety and human beings are worthless than a bunch of dirty dollars -, called me "dangerous".
At work, I was relatively accepted because I brought the money in. Full houses, every night, at my shows assured that my "oddity" was tolerated.
My musicians didn´t know how to deal with me - I wasn´t the usual "rakkasah"; I was everything they couldn´t understand; stranger than an alien with an anthem up his ass.
In my private life, I struggled to find free human beings with whom I, too, could be free.
Wherever I went, I stood out. I was the misfit. The one who always did her thing and irritated everyone along the way.
Along the way, I got used to being loved and respected by many and disliked by many more.
It never surprised me. I expected it and even welcomed it with pride.
I knew that being, dancing, and living my own way - not surrendering to the seduction of being accepted, patted on the back, a part of the system and benefitted by that system, would cost me. Freedom has a price - and it ain´t cheap.
Once I started to teach Egyptian Dance - first, in Cairo; then, around the world, physically and online -, I realized that OWNING YOUR UNIQUENESS, my motto since I could remember, was not only rare but extremely challenging for most people.
I started to observe that dancers sold their freedom in exchange for acceptance, applause, likes and followers, sympathy, applause, financial benefits, and a sense of belonging to the group that is, in fact, deeply ingrained in every human being.
We´re social - community oriented - creatures who need each other to survive and to thrive. That´s a biological fact. Although some of us are loners, introverts, better suited for solitude and silence - a huge part of me is there, in Introvert Land -, the truth is we need human connection. That´s why we live in families, groups, associations, communities, countries, nations, continents, a world family.
The problem is when that biological need for connection turns us into slaves. People pleasers. Suckers for approval.
I usually tell my students: there´s a difference between acceptance and connection.
We need connection. We don´t necessarily need acceptance. Not from everyone, at least.
And, yes, if we dare to be ourselves, we´ll be loved, seen, and understood by many and ignored, disliked, and hated by many more. Becoming comfortable of being disliked is the only way to achieve personal freedom.
Some of us like strawberries - some hate them.
Some of us love books - others have no interest in them.
Some will die for a "burrito" while others would rather eat dirt.
Nothing and no one is meant to be liked by everybody. I don´t like everyone and/or everything and neither do you. This is life. Accept it or surrender to a subtle and yet destructive kind of slavery: the need to be liked.
I say: to hell with acceptance. I want connection, real connection, to the ones who are meant to connect with me.
I say: to hell with being liked by everyone. I want to be seen and understood, truly seen and understood, by the ones who are meant to see me and understand me.
I say: to hell with the fear of being disliked. I want freedom, my personal freedom and the freedom of others, in a world where we can all dance and live together in a huge - all inclusive - party with a DJ that plays African music, then a Gipsy tune, then "Fado", then "Flamenco", and then something else I don´t necessarily understand.
Dance your dance. Live your Life, the one that makes sense to you. Do no harm and take no harm. And, above all, be the fabulous - unique, odd, lovable and unlovable - miraculous creature you were born to be.
P.S: In the video shared in this blog post, I´m dancing a Tabla Solo in a Festival in China.
As you can see, I was shamelessly myself. As usual. At the end of that performance, one of my colleagues, a professional dancer who´s been in this business even longer than I´ve been, told me:
- Watch out, Joana! They won´t forgive you the nerve. That freedom will cost you.
I thanked her because I felt that although the comment had a critical tone, it came from a good place. And I knew she was right. I´ve been paying that price till today. Happily.
That too, this happiness, will be unforgivable. Let´s dance and toast to it!
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