Marching and More Alive
Mid-century dancer Martha Graham said that no artist is ever satisfied with their work at any time. That there is a strange, “divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest” that keeps them marching and more alive than others. This is a blueprint for excellence and recipe for disaster depending on whether a balance can be maintained. We’ve been applying this blueprint to our spiritual lives, and balance is no less critical there.
The power in Graham’s statement lies in the paradox of living positively in a state of dissatisfaction and unrest. Far from blessed, we see those states as negative, and if we think of dissatisfaction as discontentment with our current circumstance, they are. But looking at dissatisfaction as the opposite of complacency—being so satisfied with our own abilities and situation that we see no need for improvement or possibility of growth—opens a door.
In spiritual terms, there is always more in heaven and earth than we can hold at any moment. Like drinking from a fire hydrant, we are aware of the flow, but our mouths can only hold so much. We see how much is getting past us, yet we’re not thirsty. Each moment is just enough; filled right to the brim, no more or less. But if we’ve avoided complacency, we can use our dissatisfaction, the awareness of the flow, to stoke our desire to grow and be able to hold more of that flow in the next moment, which will also be just enough.
Always a delicate balance. So easy for divine desire and anticipation to slide into obsession, where powerfully intrusive thoughts create distress that require compulsion, repetitive physical and mental behavior, to relieve the distress. But like compulsive hand washing over an obsession with germs—it’s never enough.
Every one of us needs dreams and goals, desire and hope, something to plan and work toward. Without a striving for excellence, human life loses the sense of meaning and purpose that makes life worth living. But if dreams become obsessive and work compulsive enough that we never experience our moments as enough, dissatisfaction is no longer divine. Merely discontented. Keeps us marching, but less alive.
