Invitation to Flirtation

On experimenting with our dreams' invitations

The other night my dream told me to be more flirtatious. From my dream notes:

Then I’m talking with Nelly and others about flirting. I’m rhyming something with Janelle (“well Janelle” or something like that) but it sounds funny because I never call her Janelle. I say I never flirt anymore but flirting used to be a core part of my identity and self-expression and how could I not flirt anymore? I feel like I want to try to bring flirting back into my life.

I woke up to this dream feeling like it was a call to action, like it was begging me to reciprocate. It was begging me to flirt, and it made me curious about how I might bring flirtatious energy back into my life.

What I said in the dream was true - there were whole periods of time, at least a decade or so, where a flirtatious energy was very present in my life and my identity. My friend Janelle and I met during this time, and her presence in the dream feels significant, a direct connection to that epoch. It was my 20s - perhaps a flirtatious time for many people - but there was a lightness, playfulness, beauty, and delight that feels very far removed from my life at the moment, where the demands of motherhood and professor life dominate my waking existence.

Janelle and I met as Peace Corps volunteers in Niger, and there is a word in the Zarma language, moradu, that roughly translates as things you have to do. Demands. Necessities. My life at the moment is full of moradu, which just doesn’t leave me feeling super flirty.

Chatting with Minna about this dream (get yourself a dream partner! :), we talked about what bringing flirting back might look like at this stage of life, such as flirting with myself and flirting with nature.

Who wouldn’t want to flirt with a nearly full moon? ;)

My beloveds in the Ecoversities Alliance have been a big inspiration around flirtation energy. At our Re-imagining Education Conferences, my friends Sierra and Andre host slow dating sessions, in which conference participants are invited to go into breakout rooms (on Zoom) and flirt together. These sessions are soooooo sweet and are a conference favorite for a lot of participants. In many conference settings, we might be accustomed to networking vibes, showboating, engaging transactionally. Slow dating invites us into a different way of relating to each other - playful, cute, delightful, seeing the sweetness in each other.

After a REC conference, the organizing team sent out stickers, one of which says “Nature is my soulmate” which adorns my water bottle. I love this sentiment. In Meenadchi’s book Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication, they share a story about intimacy with sunlight, and how exquisite that experience was. There is a way we can flirt with the sun, with the breeze, a cute flower on our path, the moon.

I have also been experimenting with flirting with myself. I have detested modern Western patriarchal capitalistic beauty standards for as long as I can remember, and especially now in middle-age, resist the sexist and consumerist demands that I stay looking younger. But I think this has also kept me away from the joy of adornment, and that it can be for myself, and not for the outside world. So I am experimenting with this - putting on lipstick for the bougainvillea flowers, dressing up to go out not because I should but for me.

This dream felt like a gift. As I process this dream and share it with you, it feels like an invitation into deeper playfulness, delight, and joy in my life. Amidst the collective heaviness of this moment, I have been navigating my own overwhelm of solo parenting and work (both of which I love, but it is just a lot sometimes - a lot of moradu). There’s so much to do all the time, and the world is literally on fire, and sometimes even play can feel like work. The dream was inviting me back into a different energy, a different stage of my life, which is long gone but which I can tap back into. I thank the dream deeply for this reminder, this call.

In our monthly dream circles, we often talk about how sometimes our dreams are giving us the gift of an experience that we might not be able to presently access in our waking life. This felt like such a dream - and also an invitation to seek it out when I am awake. During this Valentine’s week, I invite you into this play with me, and see how you might be your own sweetheart, or you might make a date with a cute more-than-human being :)

What directions are your dreams giving you? What experiments in living are they inviting you into? How might you bring flirtatious energy into your waking life, if that calls you?

Wishing you the sweetest dreams,

Stephanie

Selfies as self-love, flirting with bougainvillea <3