Balance
If I were a tightrope walker (I am not a tightrope walker), I would say that balance requires awareness and presence.
At least, at first.
If you've learned to walk a tightrope (or ride a bike), you'll know that eventually the micro-movements required to keep you upright become automatic and unthinking. I'm not sure if life balance is the same - perhaps it is for some, though I haven't found it to be so, or perhaps there are too many variables for it to be a fair comparison.
Regardless, life balance is hard. Particularly in the demanding world we live in. Unlike a see-saw, where you're either up, down, or poised in the middle, life balance is a relational field that's constantly shifting as every aspect of your existence responds to every other aspect.
The demands of our bodies - the need for rest, for sustenance, for movement, the need for a sense of meaning and purpose, the need for connection and the need for time out. The demands of our environments - maintaining homes and vehicles and tending gardens. The demands of relationships - friends, family, lovers, acquaintances, colleagues, strangers. The demands of creative work, the demands of our longings and dearest bucket list dreams. Time constraints, energy constraints, financial constraints. I know I've missed more than a few.
How on earth can we hope to ever balance all of that?
Perhaps it helps to think of balance as less of a state that we achieve, and more as a rhythm that we dance within. A place of cycles and tides, ebbs and flows. Dancing with balance, always in flux, present to the shifting sands, the knowing that we'll never arrive, always be in a state of almost-falling… if we surrender to it, that's where we'll find grace, I think.
It can feel chaotic, this jumble of demands called life, but there are threads to follow. The clearer we are about who we are, the more intimately connected we are to our values and what is truly meaningful to us, to an inner knowing that we're not taught to listen to, but if we learn to hear it… perhaps the feeling of almost-falling will start to feel more like almost-flying.
I wonder what might happen then?
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One thread we can follow as we learn to listen to that inner knowing is through our dreams - working with the symbols our psyche presents us while we're sleeping.
I have practised dreamwork on and off for years, and right now I'm diving deeper in again, inspired by a beautiful book by a dreamwork teacher I have learned much from. If you're interested in learning more about that particular thread, I highly recommend checking out Toko-pa Turner's new book, The Dreaming Way.
She talks more eloquently than I could about the ways that dreams are always acting as a personal compass towards the kind of life that will be deeply, uniquely satisfying to the person we are meant to be.