But the poem also alludes to the medicine for our human condition. It speaks to how much we need each other. We need each other to be present, awake, connected to our own life and light (and by light I don't mean positivity or some new age notion of an enlightened state of equanimity. No, I mean connected to who we are, how we are, and in touch with what animates us, and with our own heart and soul). We need each other more than we would like to admit. We need each other in the same way we need sunlight, water, air. But we have been so deeply conditioned to fear dependence and vulnerability.

Yet, the connection with another who is willing to show up and show themselves like this, in their vulnerability, with all that they are and bring in this moment, their strength and their challenges, their knowing and their questions, can be like coming home after a long time out on the road. A place of arrival, a place of comfort and inspiration. Like water for our parched hearts.

Again and again, on Movement Medicine dancefloors I am reminded how much we need this welcome from each other. How much we long for both the being welcomed and the opportunity to welcome each other. Malidoma Somé, a West African writer and healer, talks about the perverted view we have adopted in the industrial world, that needing others is somehow bad, weak, to be avoided at all cost. Many indigenous societies, including the Dagara tradition Somé comes from, recognize that needing each other is the basis and sign of a healthy community.