balance

tricky. . . balance is tricky.

It seems like life is designed to throw you off balance and a lot of living seems to consist in trying to fight against this tendency to pitch wildly in one direction or the other. Living can seem so pre-emptive, corrective. Think about it for a bit. Your daily life. How much of a balancing act is that?! Each part of you - body, soul, spirit needs balance and the whole 'you' needs it.

Basic stuff - eating, sleeping, being active. It's just so easy to screw these things up - never mind the other stuff! I feel like I don't quite have a handle on even the basics. I try to eat well, but I don't always succeed. I've wasted pennies making wishes to eat whatever and not suffer for it! I have not been given a supersonic metabolism. D'OH! I don't listen to my body when it tells me it's tired. I'm a notorious nighthawk. I'm even proud of this and 'wear' it as if it's some badge of honour! Silly, I know. It's true that I love the night. . it's when I feel at my best. It's my time. I happened to marry a man who's so much the same! So yeah, neither of us has the sense God gave us!!! GO TO BED!!! But I'm always pushing the envelope. . now it's turning around to bite me you know where! I have learned that I cannot stay up till 2 a.m. every day and expect not to suffer for it in so many ways. Being active. . . well thankfully I've more often tended to want control in this area than not. I really have fallen right off the other end though. I swear, I've had times in my adult life when I've gone "Jabba". . I do NOT want to move. . I wanna sit or lie around. I don't want to care about my muscles or my body fat to lean muscle mass ratio! Sometimes, in the past, I've said "Ptooey!" to fitness and thought of fitness buffs as obsessive and shallow. But now I do understand how necessary it is to move and get in shape and stay in shape. Balance.

Do you know what I'm saying?

Emotions, thoughts, spirit. . there's so much to balance and it's the heaviest stuff and it so easily tips the scale. I think it depends a lot on personality. I'm so prone to excess in every way. I don't just like things I must LOVE them! I am not touched by another's emotions or situations, I'm devastated by them. I don't often think 'meh' about anything. . I have to FEEL and the quality of feeling is, of course, intense. I cannot control my tears. I cannot control my tongue. I cannot control my thoughts. . they're always running fast and furious. I am not angered, I'm enraged. I'm not interested, I'm excited! Control? Balance? Help, I need help!!! I make myself crazy, and though I feel unrestrained and think I should be constrained, there rises this feeling of exuberance so real it's almost got a form, which I have to throw my arms around. Is that weird that I embrace my imbalance? It seems so much a part of me I think I love it?

Life does throw a lot at us. We're all notoriously out of balance. . It's hard to remain centered. Society sends out a constant barrage of messages and images - makes us teeter and topple. Sometimes I think about this and I get mad. It's hard to remain unscathed, unaffected. Maybe monks can remain unaffected. Maybe hermits. Maybe those who have switched off and opted out. If i think of things globally i feel 'sullied and unusual' (thanx for that one, Captain Jack!). Such wild swings of the pendulum. Opulence, hideous poverty. Greed, grace. Lush, barren. Industry, indolence. Sometimes I'm amazed that the planet can still turn on it's axis, cuz it's so off! I can picture the developing countries as if all those people were on a teeter totter and us in the West, we're holding them up in the air and they're screaming "Let us down, Charlie Brown!" and we are so 'fat' we can hold them up without even trying. We're sleek and unconcerned. We don't hear them and we tip it our way and hold it there interminably. Balance?

Spirit. . what is that? what does that mean? This is probably the biggest area of humanity's imbalance of all the areas that exist. So much to say, so much to say. But how to say it? To me, spirit is the thing you're missing. . the thing you can't fill up, the thing you can't buy, the thing you can't put your finger on, the thing that nags at you in your quietest moments, the thing that's missed when everything else has been checked off. Spirit is the thing that won't let you be. You can do anything and everything to ignore it. You can try. Some people even make it all the way to the exit ramp procrastinating, avoiding spirit's quiet certainty. Spirit is who you are supposed to be. Spirit is your vital connection to The One and there is only one and if you've read my stuff before, you know I'm saying it's God and I would not put this out there if I didn't believe with every cell in my body this is true. People are really good at avoiding and replacing, making do, bypassing. I know and I did. I'll let you know something if you don't know. This one area, spirit, it's the one that makes people nuts, it makes them go off in a million different directions, following this philosophy and that idea, and the other group and every shifting wind that blows. It's also the one area that makes people angry, the one that makes them roll their eyes, the one that divides them, makes them change the subject, makes them tune out. This one area is the key to balance for every single thing, every area of life and living.

Balance.