I Moaned Too Soon

Posted by Ellie O'Mahoney at 13:35 on 1 Dec 2009

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So there I was, in last week's blog, moaning on (and on) about how my life was topsy-turvy at the moment. What to do, I mused? Write a book? Carry on with freelance journalism? Or chuck it all in and train to be a teacher? Oh, woe, woe is me and my big, bad worries.
 
For on Tuesday I watched a film that put my career wobble into sharp perspective. Only When I Dance is the real-life story of teenagers Irlan Santos da Silva and Isabela Coracy Alves Nascimento Santos, residents of the Rio de Janeiro's favelas. They don't have choices to make. Don't have the luxury of being kept awake worrying about which cosy, well-paid job with perks to take next. Nuh uh. "It's a short life," says Irlan's dad. "Either jail or the coffin." But hopefully not for Irlan or his friend Isabela, who have decided to fight their way out of a future spent selling drugs or getting caught in the cross-fire of those who do.
 
Both are students at Rio's Centro de Danca and fit gruelling ballet practice in between studying for their High School diplomas. The film follows them as they desperately try to claw their way around the international competition circuit with life and death determination. But we don't see them descend into straight-to-camera 'winning would mean EVERYthing' statements, read straight from an X Factor script. They don't need to. We already know that this is their only chance at another life.
 
Well, the short story is that one of them gets that chance and the other one doesn't. It's snot-making, tear-rivers stuff and even harder to watch in light of my self-centered little musing last week.
 
So, this week I'm not going to navel-gaze. Not for seven whole days. Instead I'm going to spend them thanking who knows who or what that I was born somewhere that allows almost everyone an even chance of success. Leaving ingrates like me with a choice of dreams to pluck from.

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