There are different versions of this children’s song. I have vivid memories as a very young child, trying to do the actions of this song with my friends at school. I never understood at that time what a hokey or a pokey was but I thought it was great fun to jump in and out of the circle and shake around. Lately, I have been thinking about the song – that time of my life as a child and the deeper meaning that I have come to understand about both.
Sometimes, it takes awhile to get involved in life – to fully grasp what it is that you want/ need to do in life. To be perfectly honest, I have never been to the point where I could say, ah! – this is it. It is all I need, and that is for a few reasons. One reason is, that I am fickle and easily distracted. I have moved from one thing to another, relatively easily distracted, exploring, experiencing and generally allowing myself to get more and more lost in the sheer volume of things to do. The other reason is, I have never quite been at peace or comfortable with myself. This is splinters off into other reasons, explanations, none of which I can write about here (because I don’t choose to, and doesn’t have a direct impact on what the point is of this) – but the bottom line is that I have never been comfortable with who I am, not deep down. This isn’t a good or bad thing, it is just how it goes, as I have been getting to know myself better, understand where I am coming from as a person etc. It is the root cause of my moving from one thing to another like a drunken butterfly, erratically flying from flower to flower in an endless field. Of course, the other big reason for not having sorted out what it was – is that this process is fluid and I am discovering that more and more, there is no true end or beginning to these things that I am jumping into or out of… it is constantly moving, turning and dancing around like the children in this song, and that is a really beautiful thing. Whether or not I manage to put only a hand in something, or my head, or my foot, in the end, my whole self goes into each project and I get shaken about. The shaking is the best part, because I start to thinking in ways that I didn’t before, act in ways I didn’t before, and learn in ways I didn’t before.
I think the hokey pokey might just be what it is all about….
~
la
You put your left foot in,
You take your left foot out
Your put your left foot in
And you shake it all about
You do the hokey pokey
And turn yourself around
That’s what it’s all about.
You put your right foot in
You take your right foot out
You put your right foot in
And you shake it all about
You do the hokey pokey
And you turn yourself around
That’s what it’s all about
You put your left hand in
You take your left hand out
You put your left hand in
And you shake it all about
You do the hokey pokey
And turn yourself around
That’s what it’s all about.
You put your right hand in
You take your right hand out
You put your right hand in
And you shake it all about
You do the hokey pokey
And you turn yourself around
That’s what it’s all about
You put your head in
You take your head out
Your put your head in
And you shake it all about
You do the hokey pokey
And you turn yourself around
That’s what it’s all about
You put your whole self in
You take your whole self out
You put your whole self in
And you shake it all about
You do the hokey pokey
And you turn yourself around
That’s what it’s all about
lei fraser 