Aye, there’s the rub, all the puns intended. Although I sometimes wonder if it might be, at least in part, due also to a general tendency in us to be self-conscious, un-curious, and not very good at respect in everything we do.

There’s this unexpectedly good movie I know of. I forget what it’s called, but it’s got Antonio Banderas in it, and he plays a ballroom dancing teacher who teaches ballroom dancing to inner-city kids.

When people ask him what possible good a ballroom dancing class could be to inner city high school kids, he said this thing that had me on the edge of my brain for months, and that I still think about all the time.

I can’t remember the quote exactly, so bear with my summary.

Essentially, he said that if young men and young women can learn to touch each other with respect early in life, then the consequence of that ability later in life will spill into everything else they do. Dancing is slow, intimate, and it places you in a position to be ridiculed; it also requires a degree of trust placed in another person to take care of you and to guide you and to agree when you suggest guidance, and it all has to be done nonverbally and, therefore, deep down somewhere inexplicable. The teacher man, in sultry Antonio Banderas’ voice — so all the more sexy and believable — suggested that it might teach respect in all things.

I think about that a lot.

I don’t know what to do with the thoughts, except to be as respectful as I know how to be as much as I know how to be, and to meditate on respect when I can… I don’t know. Getting all muzzy for me.

Emergency joke: My gran once got me a book of mime. I think she was trying to tell me something, but I can’t quite figure it.