On the Quest for Grace
I often joke that it is my life’s work to find the grace that I was not born with. From my frame to my fearlessness, I am not graceful. In the traditional sense anyway. I would watch Audrey Hepburn movies and marvel at her effortless grace of movement. I would watch interviews with Nina Simone and revere the grace she kept under tremendously difficult circumstances.
Identifying grace
As a concept, grace is amorphous. One person does not embody it completely, nor does one behaviour belie it. I am a firm believe that swearing has f*ck all to do with grace. Grace is a state of mind, an aura, and the most enigmatic of mistresses. I suppose I first identified grace as being that thing that I naturally didn’t have. Those are the easiest traits to spot as a child, those which you have yet to master.
Learning that grace is more than ballet
I took ballet classes as a child. The teacher remarked that I had a lovely long neck. It wasn’t long before the shape of me versus the shape of others had me feeling not graceful enough for ballet. My 8-year old mind associated thinness with gracefulness. Ballet was grace, performed.
As I moved through life, I found more and more examples of grace manifested in behaviour and action. Grace would identify itself in those moments of patience under pressure. But more importantly, grace wasn’t restraint, or suppression. It was that tightrope of demeanour that neither took away from someone’s morality or spirituality, yet still pressed home an uncomfortable truth.
Grace is elevation. It is the ability to have pride but not suffer fools. It is the oppressed wishing solely for equality, not revenge. It is balance without loss.
Grace is not a filter
Once I had learned enough about myself to realise that grace wasn’t my gut reaction but could be attained; I set about learning how. But grace isn’t really something that can be used as a filter. It is not the mask through which you look to somehow change your appearance. It is holding yourself in a different way.
The clincher for any change of behaviour is to see something you admire and seek to emulate that. To bring something productive out of yourself despite your primal inclinations. Grace, for me, is perspective. A culmination of self-reflection and a desire to seek understanding of that which is different to me.
Grace has power
When George Floyd was murdered by the police, millions of angry voices rose up. Many would have you believe that their protests were lacking in grace. But let’s reframe that. In the face of intolerable racism, fear, inequality and murder, protesting is a graceful act. Grace can be found in solidarity. Grace can be found by leaving your judgement at the door and listening to those voices without the filter of privilege.
This article didn’t start off being about the Black Lives Matter protests, but I saw grace, and it spoke to me.
When you fall with wild abandon, you have to stand with grace
We all make mistakes, but it is how we recover from those mistakes that highlights our grace. It has taken me forty years to understand that I have grace within me, and the ability to manifest it. I may not have been born with a natural grace of movement, but I have learned that grace is tangible in many ways and in many forms within me.
Afterall, a graceful rebellion is as beautiful as a ballet, don’t you know?
