Balance- the Holy Grail of the 21st Century
The Elusivity of Balance
Or
Balance- the Holy Grail of the 21st Century
Or
Balance- the Holy Grail of the 21st Century
My idea of balance, the balance that I seek is calm, tranquil, level and serene, an ideal. I never find this calm and tranquil balance for very long and wonder if it is like the holy grail, a legend, a myth and all this time I have been on a wild goose chase searching for something I shall never find. When I do find it will I even know what it looks like and is it something I can hang on to. Is balance a verb or a noun? I think for too long we have sought the noun when in fact it is the verb we need.
I feel more that I disappear into the depths of one thing or another and are not able to find this “balance”, this harmonious and mythical place where things work together. My life is more like a pendulum that swings from one direction to another and then back again. Giddy I look around to steady myself as I swing another direction. Somethings get neglected while I swing in another direction and then back again to be reconnected.
I wonder, is not the pendulum of perpetual motion not a form of balance? Could I not claim my life, myself is balanced as long as I’m swinging? Perhaps it is better to continue swinging, searching for that center balance and in the process be balanced, than to find stillness, to stop off balance? So I take console in the fact that perhaps my life is more balanced than I think it is.
Maybe what’s missing is a clear goal, a point to center my gaze on like dancers do when they spin. Perhaps then I would find my calm in all this perpetual motion, this oscillation.
Finding ones goal, purpose, ones point on the horizon, that’s the tricky question and often a moving target.
What is this balance, this ever so elusive balance that we seek? A goal made more weighty in modern times when we are supposed to be able to have it “all”. The weight of “all” is heavy, no wonder it is tipping the scale off balance, tilting it towards ever more busyness, in our endless task of acquiring, achieving, obtaining, maintaining. All a lot of busy doing and not a lot of being. We do motherhood: driving, carpooling, organising, rallying, working- when do we get to just be a mother.
When I’m out of balance, not just a little bit, but a lot out of balance, I feel myself reverberate, like a tuning stick struck. I vibrate either side of myself trying to catch up with or slow down to myself. I can see myself just out of focus, refracted all around me like some dark halo. I step and I hear the echo of my step as I try to catch up with myself. Almost like one foot in this world and one foot in some parallel world, just out of sync and only vaguely visible through a foggy window.
I try to calm myself with yoga or chi gong, be in the moment, the current moment and my invisible arms reach out and grab hold of bits of me, pulling them back into my center. Making me feel more solidly grounded in this world and less like a shadow that may disappear as the sun shifts the light, casting me away. Then I return to the demands of my day and a screaming child evaporates this state of calmness. C’est la vie- it begins again.
Balance is not only three dimensional, it is four dimensional in its complexities. Balance of the personal external things, work, family, motherhood, diet, health, leisure etc with the more complex inner things, calm, centered, desires, flowing energies, creative spirit, joy, gratitude and then out to balance the larger external, the planet, humanity, the environment, karma. Always so many balls in the air.
Balance isn’t something you can tick of your to do list, synchronise with you i-phone. Balance requires deep introspection- everyone needs to find their own point of balance. The point where you find stillness in the perpetual movement. You can not seek someone else’s definition of balance and hope to meet your own. Balance can be held for a moment- but what about when you string all those moments together? Practice, choices, priorities. Balance requires trial and error and surrender, it is both a passive and an active practice. And it is a practice, a journey, something you do not find but something that you choose and do. At the very least, balance in a dialogue you have with yourself.
“To keep your balance you must keep moving” Einstein
I wonder, is not the pendulum of perpetual motion not a form of balance? Could I not claim my life, myself is balanced as long as I’m swinging? Perhaps it is better to continue swinging, searching for that center balance and in the process be balanced, than to find stillness, to stop off balance? So I take console in the fact that perhaps my life is more balanced than I think it is.
Maybe what’s missing is a clear goal, a point to center my gaze on like dancers do when they spin. Perhaps then I would find my calm in all this perpetual motion, this oscillation.
Finding ones goal, purpose, ones point on the horizon, that’s the tricky question and often a moving target.
What is this balance, this ever so elusive balance that we seek? A goal made more weighty in modern times when we are supposed to be able to have it “all”. The weight of “all” is heavy, no wonder it is tipping the scale off balance, tilting it towards ever more busyness, in our endless task of acquiring, achieving, obtaining, maintaining. All a lot of busy doing and not a lot of being. We do motherhood: driving, carpooling, organising, rallying, working- when do we get to just be a mother.
When I’m out of balance, not just a little bit, but a lot out of balance, I feel myself reverberate, like a tuning stick struck. I vibrate either side of myself trying to catch up with or slow down to myself. I can see myself just out of focus, refracted all around me like some dark halo. I step and I hear the echo of my step as I try to catch up with myself. Almost like one foot in this world and one foot in some parallel world, just out of sync and only vaguely visible through a foggy window.
I try to calm myself with yoga or chi gong, be in the moment, the current moment and my invisible arms reach out and grab hold of bits of me, pulling them back into my center. Making me feel more solidly grounded in this world and less like a shadow that may disappear as the sun shifts the light, casting me away. Then I return to the demands of my day and a screaming child evaporates this state of calmness. C’est la vie- it begins again.
Balance is not only three dimensional, it is four dimensional in its complexities. Balance of the personal external things, work, family, motherhood, diet, health, leisure etc with the more complex inner things, calm, centered, desires, flowing energies, creative spirit, joy, gratitude and then out to balance the larger external, the planet, humanity, the environment, karma. Always so many balls in the air.
Balance isn’t something you can tick of your to do list, synchronise with you i-phone. Balance requires deep introspection- everyone needs to find their own point of balance. The point where you find stillness in the perpetual movement. You can not seek someone else’s definition of balance and hope to meet your own. Balance can be held for a moment- but what about when you string all those moments together? Practice, choices, priorities. Balance requires trial and error and surrender, it is both a passive and an active practice. And it is a practice, a journey, something you do not find but something that you choose and do. At the very least, balance in a dialogue you have with yourself.
“There’s no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves” Frank Herbert
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Gxx