Trance, Dance, and How Their Red Lips Shine in the Slant of the Night

(Reading this again, posting this again.)

I guess it is from reading Jennifer Michael Hecht's Myth of Happiness again that my morning drive Big Thinking Time wonders into considerations of "trance or dance;" specifically, I'm curious about the intersections-- of each of us and our other people -- as defining units of self.

When we choose to work as pairs or groups, we tend toward known roles. My curiosity is about moments of insight, when individuals become aware of participating in welcome choreography. And the lack thereof, when we move unconsciously, in a trance. Agile software development methodology is, at least conceptually, a dance. A group agreeing to a deadline that each member knows to be undoable - that is a trance.

Relationships, teams; they are drawn from the lines between. Like the spare coherence of molecular structure, our defining lines bundle us into systems and roles toward goals. In to pairs, triangles, groups tumbling into routines set in (e)motion as strings of genetic and cultural syntax.

Here is "trance or dance" - these bundled movements, are they conditioned reactions coded to reproduce what we are coded to reproduce? Or are we joined intentionally in motion that itself is the performance. How possibly to know the difference?

Their red lips shining in the slant of the night before the first day of school. This is the rose of the children, snuck to school after bedtime to see which teacher they got - lists were posted before the year begins - and which friends will join them in class. This is the shine of their healthy bonds bouncing unpracticed under the eave of the entrance to the school year.

This is the concluding sentence wrapping it all together.