Have you ever felt off-balance?
You’ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act. Just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left.
— Dr. Seuss
from Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
Have you ever felt off-balance? I have. Sometimes I feel just a little out of kilter. And, sometimes I’m tilting every which way. Like the tires on my car, my life seems to need a bit of adjustment every now and then… a subtle shift of weight. The challenge is to find that sweet spot where all things return to even keel – lean to the left, lean to the right, stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight – and then, ta-da! Balance is restored! (Momentarily at least.)
Author and cleric, Richard Schnase ponders the probability that we’re a wee bit out of balance most of the time.
It’s taken a while for me to abandon the notion of a balanced life and to embrace the idea of balancing life. This difference may seem subtle, but is really quite significant.
We’re never the perfect weight, we never find the perfect mix of work and play, and we never manage to feed all our physical, emotional, and spiritual hungers with the exact portions necessary while also sustaining those around us and meeting all our professional and community obligations.
We never can calculate out the exact amount of time each of our children or family members will need from us, or us from them, and we can never anticipate the interruptions, opportunities, graces and griefs that mark our journey. We never find the ideal pattern that needs no reconsideration, recalibration, or rebalancing.
Life is constant movement, forward stepping, sidetracking, detouring, self-correcting, getting a little lost, and finding our way back with the help of friends…the tightrope walker with her excellent sense of balance is never completely balanced; she is always balancing.
So, it’s a balancing act – with “act” being the operative word.
Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one’s balance.
— Eric Hoffer
Hoffer’s on to something: balancing is action. And, when we start to notice that things are going off balance, it’s up to us to pay attention and supply the counter-action that will refresh our equilibrium and enable us to carry on with the important tasks of our lives. But I think Hoffer’s also got it wrong. It’s subtle action that’s needed, not wild flailing and swinging. Those overreactions plunge us into chaos and confusion and rob us of our ability to focus and balance. Like Schnase’s tightrope walker, our life path needs a balancing pole not a windmill!
If I’m losing balance in a pose, I stretch higher and God reaches down to steady me.
— Terri Guillemets
Now that’s more like it! Feeling off kilter, about to stumble? Good – you’ve noticed before you actually took a fall. Now, take a deep breath. Stretch higher, ask for God’s steadying grace. And subtly shift yourself to a new way of being in the moment.
Here are a couple of the balance-shifting situations (Is that like shape-shifting? Now there’s a skill I’d like to have!) I’ve experienced lately:
I had stopped getting myself up and out early for my morning walk. And if I don’t get it done early, I don’t get it done! So I joined a twice a week exercise class (those of you who visit often know I’m talking about Zumba® here) to shift my energy expenditure balance back in the right direction.
I felt like a stranger and lonesome going to church all by myself so I joined a small bible study group and now I feel “at home” at church again.
And here’s one I haven’t resolved yet: I often find myself still awake at 1 or 2 AM. It’s not insomnia, I just seem to get a second wind of wakefulness that lasts late into the night. Yesterday PattiAnn wrote about protecting ourselves:
Take the time to rest and relax. Only by taking care of yourself physically and mentally can you truly be able to bounce back like the Palm trees. Only by taking care of yourself, can you continue to believe in your own tremendous power.
And I know in my gut that she’s right, I need to protect myself and regain my good balance of sleep to wakefulness. So while this comment amuses me for now…
The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.
— Ogden Nash
…and I can laugh at this situation, I’ll be experimenting with small changes (so as to avoid the flailing of arms!) and, sooner or later something will work. I hope. I guess I’ll trust in God’s good grace while I focus on the following advice from Pat Obuchowski, professional coach:
You have the Answer. Just get quiet enough to hear it.
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