In the last five years, Emperor Marcus Aurelius has been a constant in my life, a role model, impossible to emulate, but always a good Sage by my side.

I know he has been dead for a little while, at least 1845 years, to be accurate.

Information about him could be incomplete, biased, or subject to interpretation. Still, something sure about him is that when he was emperor of Rome, he was the most powerful human being in the world. 

In his Meditations (a personal private diary that was not intended to be public), he starts the book by expressing gratitude to all the people who positively impacted his life.

That made me wonder if the most powerful person on the planet, someone that could feel like a god on earth, felt the need to express his gratitude to his mentors and family in a private diary, acknowledging that he would not be the person he was without their influence. It must be that gratitude is an essential trait we humans have, and we should practice it more often.

As dancers, auditioning processes are inherent to the profession, but somehow, it still needs to be normalized and has room for improvement, for me more on the human side than the system itself.

I am a person, a colleague, and a dancer. My work is usually to help a choreographer create his craft by lending the knowledge of dance and movement stored in my mind and body. Also, a part of that deed is to bond with my colleagues to feel like one organism moving through the black box.

What do I give to myself by doing this? 

What do I give to others? 

I guess among many things the one that sticks out to me the most is emotion.

I work to feel emotion and to give emotion.