"Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?"

You might have recognised it as the refrain from Lewis Carroll’s Lobster Quadrille – a beautiful gentle poem, and an invitation to join the dance.

I love the idea of offering an invitation to join a different world – whether it be through coaching,  NLP, writing for self-expression or finding ways to tell a different version of your story.

It reminds me of the very famous "Invitation" written by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, a poem that went flying around the world when she first wrote it.  And you can understand why – it’s a piece of writing that once read you feel compelled to pass on.   You’ll see what I mean from this short extract…

… It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive…

And the invitation opens up another a new metaphor: of life as a dance. 

Dancing as the adventure of being alive.

Which brings us back to the question: will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?

Some of the most famous bits are written in “nonsense”, words that don’t appear in our English dictionaries and don’t have any ‘meaning’ in a normal, conventional, fixed kind of way…and yet, in our imaginations can mean anything, and nothing, and everything – all at the same time.

Here’s one of the most famous poems, this time from ‘Through the Looking Glass’. You might remember it from childhood perhaps? And I wonder what the words meant to you then…and if they have a different meaning for you now…and what that might tell you about how your own story has developed…and changed…and grown…

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought –
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.