PEOPLE WHO INSPIRE
The Secret to Finding your Path with Linas Kairys
Justina and Roberta sit down with Linas Kairys, folk dance enthusiast who shares his impact on the American-Lithuanian community, how he found his passion, his why, and how others can start following their dreams too.
“I got in an elevator. And someone asked, ‘Do you remember me?’
I’m thinking, ‘No, but I know who you are, and I can tell exactly where you’re from.’ And I go, ‘You were yay tall when I saw you last time. And now I’m looking up at you.’
I know the faces, but I don’t always know the names. There’s a lot of kids, after all.
He goes, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’
A little pause. We’re going down a few floors.
And he flat out looks at me and says,
‘I need you to know that you were the reason for my happiness every summer growing up.’”
We all have someone in our life who has impacted our view of the world, perhaps unknowingly. Linas Kairys happens to be one of those people for a lot of Lithuanian Americans.
We met Linas back in 2015 while attending Camp Neringa, a Lithuanian heritage sleepaway camp tucked away in the lush, green, vibrant state of Vermont. At the time, Linas was a counselor, and we vividly remember being awed by the presence he held. He hosted leadership classes, was the guiding voice in our campfire choruses, starred in camp plays, and taught us all how to be a bit more open.
This year, we both had the opportunity to reconnect with Linas. He is currently our dance teacher for the Lithuanian folk dance group based in Brooklyn, called Tryptinis. Knowing how much of a light he was for us made us wonder how many others had been touched by his spirit and we thought, what better way than to get to the source.
We had the pleasure of having a real conversation with Linas, where we uncovered what it means to follow your heart, and whether leadership is something that comes naturally or something that’s learned.
If you are lucky enough to know Linas, we are sure you know exactly what we mean.
It is no surprise that Linas has impacted many people over the years, most specifically campers at Camp Neringa, with his optimism, energy, and enthusiasm. He has a way of making people feel seen, something he tells us he only fully noticed pretty recently, at the Lithuanian Dance Festival in Philadelphia in 2022.
“And that hit me like a truck. And it was so quick. He just said that. And he got off the elevator and left and did his own thing,” Linas shared.
“And I was just like, ‘Whoa.’ Like, I’m just, as anybody else, me. It did hit me as a reality check. I was like, wow. The way of inspiring, the energy… to me it was like I was just me. I don’t add anything else.”
Our response?
Authenticity is magnetic. That’s why so many people resonate with him. People notice when you are being your true self. They see it, and they connect with it.
Being an unapologetic version of yourself is exactly what you are meant to be doing here.
That same grounded authenticity shows up clearly in how Linas lives today.
He has his feet dipped in many worlds at once. Laughing, he describes his life as a “chaotic mess,” juggling roles that keep him both creatively and practically fulfilled. On paper, Linas is a part-time professor teaching lighting design for live performance at Toronto Metropolitan University, an electrician, and a dance teacher and choreographer, his favorite role of all.
Based in Toronto, he teaches both in Canada and in Brooklyn, New York, working with the student group we’re a part of. Meeting someone this busy naturally makes you wonder: how do you keep balance when your life is this full?
“I just go. I just keep going. I don’t stop, I think that’s the thing…”
For most people, juggling five different roles in a week would feel draining. But for Linas, these paths energize him. He speaks about the importance of finding routes that fill your cup, rather than empty it.
“So personal time came through the dance, being energized. And not that I love talking about dance all the time, but I love talking to people. I’m just like, ‘So what are you fired up about? What is it about you?’ For me, it’s dance. I’ll talk to you for hours about it. What is that thing that gets people going?”
When it comes to rest and balance, Linas reframes the idea entirely.
“So personal time… if you look at it metrically, the quantified time, I don’t have much. But I find inner peace and balance through the dance. Getting there and thinking, ‘Yeah, let’s make magic happen today. Let’s just do it.’”
It becomes apparent that we need to ask ourselves more often: what is the thing that gets me going?
His journey of discovering this came through years of discovering “little bits and bobs” of spark.
It began as a kid, when he realized his love for being on a stage. Although we all think of him as a never ending source of energy, surprisingly, he says he did not come out of the womb this way.
His mother was the program coordinator for family camp at Camp Neringa for 13 years, meaning he grew up fully immersed in the community, and bore witness from an early age what being a leader looked like.
Throughout the years, realizations swayed from the need to be on stage, to all things artistic in general. Although perhaps one artistic route didn’t bring fulfillment or financial security, it presented another piece of the puzzle resolving the question, “Who am I?”
“We can all still be kids. I think it’s a choice to mature, in a sense. You can totally mature, but you can always still goof off and the goofiness isn’t wrong. It’s like, we were all there at one point, right? We all… you know, got responsibilities.”
It was in high school that Linas tells us there was one particular teacher that inspired something deeper about leadership for him.
“In high school, I was part of this leadership camp. And I had this amazing teacher. He was the cultural counselor for the district. He did events, and his speciality was in leadership. He took kids and would give them one-on-ones…
What attracted me to him was that he had a team. He had a team of maybe seven people, but those seven people were consistent, backed each other up. It was like a sitcom. The same gang doing the same silly bit. And I was like, ‘How do you do it?’”
The magic of this particular leader was the ability to show, instead of tell. He possessed the ability to be completely giving with his ways. With an entire group of people looking up to him, Linas tells us he [former teacher] never took any of this praise to his head. The part of leadership that does not focus on managing the personalities, but seeing fully what each individual personality brings to the table, and building such a level of trust within the group, that no matter who falls, someone will be there to catch them.
“How do I be me, and you be you, and work simply from that?”
This brings us to a pivotal point in 2019 in which Linas unintentionally scored a role as the dance teacher for Camp Neringa.
He was informed that the dance choreographer and teacher was sick and unable to teach for those weeks, and out of nowhere, he was requested to take over his role. A moment that caught him off guard, that perhaps was not exactly “prepared” for, yet the same moment where he realized, he does have enough knowledge and will simply figure it out.
“And it wasn’t until I had to make my first choreography, I had to make my first dance, and I was like, Wow, there’s something here to it. There was something that was really fun.
And it wasn’t until Gintaras, who was the music teacher, asked, ‘Do you have any more [dances]?’ And I said, ‘No, this is camp… I don’t have any more.’ And he told me, well, one, he sees a talent in me, and he goes, ‘There is a future. You can do this.’
And I was thinking, “I have no idea what that future is.”
Now an interesting discovery of a new question presented itself to Linas: how does one become a choreographer? The lengthy path of not only creating the dance, but leading it, expressing it, teaching it, and believing in it. An unintentional turn of events that ultimately led him to discover a newfound path, and the beginning of yet another role in his life to play, as a dance teacher.
Linas mentions the philosophy of Simon Sinek, the founder of the podcast, “A Bit of Optimism”, who has impacted him a lot. He talks about how following your dream does not require a whole drawn out plan, but just the destination.
“‘Where are you going?’
‘L.A.’
“Okay, how are you getting there?”
My philosophy is: no clue. But I’m going to get there. Like that’s what it is for me. It’s like, “What is my crazy idea?” My crazy idea is I want this. How do we get there? I have no concept.
I always jump into the unknown. I have no clue. But every time I’m like, “Yeah, I am so comfortable with making a mistake, admitting it, and then saying, ‘Let’s do it again.’” No fear of failing. Let’s do it again. Let’s figure out how we get to that spot. So that fear is always there.”
Linas continues to tell us that in order to go through a fear, perhaps one that involves following your dream, you simply learn to surrender and accept it. You remember your why.
“Whatever ticks in your brain, whatever it is… for me, it was like, I had to fail six times. I had to do things where I did it for a purpose first.
For example: summer camp.
Summer camp is like… you go through the silliness, the goofiness. And if you do it anywhere else in the world, you’re like, “I’m so embarrassed.” But when you do it in summer camp — and I remember doing it with Jogi and everybody else — it was like: “For the kids.” For the kids.
And you start doing it with a purpose. And then when you start finding your inner peace or you start finding what you want to do internally — what’s the purpose? I do it for me. What’s the purpose? Because I’m doing it for the community.
And you start blanking out the reasoning — and if you develop some humility, you don’t hide it.
When you get through that, there is nothing to fear. Because at the end of the day, everybody either has fomo, everybody has imposter syndrome, everybody makes mistakes. So you have to just accept it and be like, ‘My mistake. My bad.’
I know that this purpose is here. If we’re still on the same page, where we’re all kind of like, ‘Yeah, forgiveness,’ okay — let’s do it again. Let’s do it again. And that’s the thing that drives.
If I had to guide or tell somebody about it, it’s like:
- A) do it a million times to understand every perspective.
- B) if you can’t find why you’re not doing it, you’re going to find a lot of struggle. You need to really get the reasoning. Really find what your element is.”
The theme remains to be that whatever it is that you’re “meant” to be doing, will naturally find you. For Linas, it was dance and performance. No matter where he was in life, the underlying current of purpose kept finding him.
When we start noticing what instinctively pulls us, we find crucial information about ourselves. May it not always be about money, but the things that don’t feel like work at all, even after 40 hours of it. It’s as simple as listening.
Enjoy the space between where you are and where you are going. It’s where all the magic lies.
Linas, thank you for your trust sharing your story, your heart, and sharing with us, and all of you. It means more than you know.
Left feeling something? Let us know!