(Originally posted April 15, 2020)
We are on stay-at-home orders here in Florida due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so I told myself I'm going to do more stretching, exercising, even meditation. So far, I haven't done much of any of it.
Most of my get in shape efforts have been half-hearted at best. The last time I really committed to exercise was a yoga class several years ago (photo above). OK. Not serious yoga. It was a 'Yoga and Mimosa' class at a local restaurant. Just my style.
When I got there, I discovered the yoga instructor was new and was trying to promote her class, so she hired a video guy to film the whole thing. "Do you mind signing this release?" she asked.
Sure. Why not? I am happy (NOT!!) to be the poster child for the middle-aged, menopausal woman who, if she REALLY worked at it, could revive her female hourglass shape. Ah, alas the sad fact is that my sand has pretty much run down to the bottom of my hourglass and there is very little hope of getting it back. I couldn't keep up and never went back.
When I was in high school I tried out for various sports including basketball because I'm tall, but was never picked for the team. In my twenties, I was told by my eye doctor that I have cross dominance. "What does that mean?" I asked. "Well," he said, "People with that condition are not particularly athletic." My take on all of this was I'm a total klutz.
According to Psychology Wiki: "Cross-dominance, (1% prevalence in the general population) also known as mixed-handedness, mixed dominance and cross laterality, is a motor skills manifestation in which a person not necessarily being truly ambidextrous favors one hand for some crucial and precise fine motor skill operations and the other for others. It can also refer to mixed laterality, which refers to a person favoring eyes, ears, feet, or hands on opposite sides of the body."
That's me. Mixed laterality. I am right handed but left-eye dominant, and until this very moment, I never looked into the implications of that. Apparently, I would have been really good at basketball, because (I'm freakishly tall and) I could have developed skills with both hands. But because I never had someone to help me develop this anomaly, it never happened for me. (I'm ok. I moved on.)
People need the wisdom and perspective of others to learn and nurture their special talents. While we navigate this newly energized pandemic learning paradigm -- virtual classrooms (HOORAY!! to our Teachers who adapted pretty much overnight), online learning, and one-on-one web connectivity -- there is this amazing opportunity for all of us to recognize that thing (or things) in each of us and encourage it. We can all be teachers.
My chance of being a basketball legend has passed. The hourglass has run out on my girlish figure. But I'm really good at lifting my glass to teachers with one hand while scrolling through my social media feed with the other. Surely there is a market for that, right?