Exploring What is Essential
/
Words are essential to me. Not only are words a way to communicate, they are also the center of my fascination. To truly determine a word’s value, to weigh it properly, I analyze its definition(s), observe its usage, and contemplate its variations over time. Once I understand a word, I can then play with it – I can put it in a poem such that each of its meanings or connotations may be read. There isn’t a single word of my poetry to which I haven’t given second thought.
While this fascination often makes me pedantic, it also means that I think carefully about the words I use daily, and I mean exactly the words I say. Poetry is such a challenging art form because, as one of my college professors put it, “We take language – this thing that we use every day, all day – and we turn it into art.” To me this means that I can challenge how others perceive words by the way I employ them in my work.
The word I am challenging today is, “essential.”
Lately, I’m paying attention to “essential” because it appears frequently in the news - particularly in relation to the current COVID-19 pandemic. We have decided, or it has been decided for us, what is essential to our survival so that we can come out on the other side of the pandemic with as few casualties as possible.
I began to reconsider the usage of “essential” as it relates to both the COVID-19 pandemic and my life on Friday, March 13, 2020 because I received an email at 6 a.m. that canceled “any non-essential, non-instructional activities” in schools across New York City. The rest of the email regrettably canceled the performance I was scheduled to have that very morning. My 5th grade students, their teachers and parents, the school administration, and I were understandably upset. Once schools are back in session, I hope that we will be able to reschedule the performance and be able to showcase the ballroom dances that the 5th graders learned.
As a teaching artist for Dancing Classrooms, a non-profit that teaches social and emotional learning through ballroom dance, I feel that my work is essential. Because the program builds towards a final presentation, the performance is also essential. Recitals and performances of any kind are essential as a demonstration of growth in skill and maturity as well as a celebration of completing a journey. I believe this is true for people of all ages, but it is especially true for children. It is as simple as hanging a child’s drawing on the refrigerator. By celebrating and acknowledging a child’s abilities and growth, we create a sense of their intrinsic value – leading children to feel confident, proud, and able to approach challenges. The essential value of performances and recitals is intangible.
Presently, we are creating access to what is essential to survival and by doing this, I believe that we are also highlighting those intangible elements that are essential to life. Business that are still open in New York City are ones that contribute to our physical, mental and financial health – which is absolutely necessary. While the primary concern is to keep folks healthy, the secondary concern is purely economic. There are several articles put out daily about how the economy and the stock market have been affected by the pandemic.
Image from The Little Prince (2015). Poster in a school hallway emphasizes the aspect of being essential to the workforce.
Yet, I observe that many people are feeling the effects of losing access to leisurely activities. Leisurely activities spark happiness and enjoyment in a myriad of ways. In this period of isolation how do we contribute to our intangible essential needs? How do we fulfill the desires of growth, connection, comfort and validation? What is essential to one’s existence?
Naturally, what is essential for me may not be essential for you. To satisfy my desire for intellectual challenges, I need theater, museums, art, and people who will tackle those conversations and experiences with me. To satisfy my ever-present desire for physical movement, I need to dance and see dancers that inspire me. To satisfy my need for connection I need communal experiences, hugs, physical affection, and the physical presence of others. To sit at a café table with a good friend and cup of coffee is something I will never presume to take for granted again. While the online world allows me to tour museums, watch Broadway shows, live stream dance classes, and video chat with friends, there is simply no replacement for standing in front of Rodin’s David or Eternal Spring, for watching Bernadette Peters in Hello, Dolly!, or for being present with my colleagues and friends.
I long for these things because my life’s work has presently been deemed “non-essential,” and that is a very discouraging experience.
“What is essential to my existence?”
As laid out above, there many answers to this question, yet there is one answer that I have passed over. It is the answer that I’ve had the longest; the answer that I have defined myself by for as long as I can remembering thinking it.
Words are essential to my existence. Writing is the action of my essence.
In Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke advises,
Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied to write. This above all – ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should affirmative, if you may meet this earnest questions with a strong and simple “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and testimony to it.