It was my first time at an international Lindy Hop dance event, and I’d heard some of the best dancers in the world were attending.
Aside from courage, I knew I needed one thing: comfortable shoes. I was excited, nervous, and quite unprepared.
Proper dance shoes help feet to glide and can prevent knee and hip injuries. The thought didn’t cross my mind to buy dance shoes. I was a full-time student paying my way through school, after all. But I’d heard that some people used duct tape—that I could afford.
I carefully cut and placed strips of tape on the front part of the soles of my shoes. It worked well enough for me to spin, turn, and swivel. Awesome… or so I thought.
With each dance, the tape began to peel off little by little, and after pulling it off entirely, my shoes remained a sticky mess for several weeks. I could no longer dance in them, and I could hardly walk in them.
Short term solution? Maybe. Was it a good one? I think my once perfectly good shoes would disagree. One thing is for sure, I certainly learned my lesson about investing in a good pair of dance shoes.
I think this is kind of how life can be. You may find a short-term solution for a problem, only to realize that it leaves a sticky residue. It lives past the night of dancing and reminds you of your choices each time you wear the shoes.
I’m learning to ask: how will this choice affect me once I’ve walked off both the figurative and literal dance floor?
It takes courage to ask myself and others around me what other solutions may be out there.
In retrospect, I could have found another solution and eliminated the necessity for duct tape altogether. Maybe I could’ve asked more advanced dancers for their advice and experiences with dancewear. I could’ve even tried my luck and asked if they had an old pair they could donate.
So maybe dance shoes and life lessons don’t exactly go hand-in-hand, or “foot-in-foot”, but I like to think even the most random of events have a lesson to be learned.