Jan 07 2009
Balance
Sometimes feeling physically under the weather is the hardest part of a day. We humans are a blend of our physical, emotional and mental natures. The three are intimately linked. In striving to live life to the fullest and enjoy everyday it takes these three natures to be functioning properly. Its like putting the cart before the horse in some ways, you focus your time and attention on the emotional stuff in your life and you wake up one day to realize you are really tired. I am starting to realize that it is important, just as important to care for my physical well being as it is to continue my journey to understand my emotional and spiritual quest. It can also be overwhelming to take care of yourself when you are tired and feeling beat up by life’s circumstances. In the past I have been overly focused on the physical nature of my life. I caught a great episode of Oprah the other day and she spoke a great deal about balance. I think it is a simple concept to add balance to your life. Of course it is obvious when you see a person who applies this balance thing. I have a wonderful friend who has always seemed to get the balance thing. People who get and apply this concept seem to know how to be “happy”. They seem to know how to “stop and smell the roses”, even if the roses are growing in the middle of a pile of manure. I on the other hand have no idea how to live a balanced life. I am more the type that lives like I am a pinball in a big pinball machine being flung this way and that and doing the best I can to make the best of where ever I may land at any given moment. All of this is really quite paradoxical. You see if you have faith that everything is ok and will always be ok, then you have to let go of trying to always control everything and plan everything. Balance seems to me to take an awful lot of planning and control. These days my life has been about letting go. Letting go of preconceived notions and plans and opening myself to the universes plan for me. Again, I am a little pinball in a pinball machine waiting to see where life flings me next, always hoping for the best, but also bracing myself for the worst. So balance seems to be elusive for me. Actually it seems like a fantasy because my life is filled with must do lists and adding to it seems impossible even if it means adding pleasant things like time to take care of myself with nutritious meals, and exercise. ( I won’t even touch on the financial barriers to nutritious meals here because that is a topic for a political blog, eating healthy is not something easily accessible to the masses in America that’s why obesity runs rampant in poorer communities. Take a look at school menus someday, look at what the under-privileged can afford to eat if they eat at all… like I said, a topic for a political blog) It seems to me today that balance is about sacrificing one thing for another, so if I choose to rest today because I am tired, that means the house does not get cleaned, and the clothes don’t get washed and the dog doesn’t get walked, and dinner doesn’t get made. I know I know some of you will say well that stuff can wait, in a hundred years who will care if your floor didn’t get washed on January 7, 2009. Here is the problem with that theory, sooner or later those things must be tended to, and the longer they get put off the bigger of a task they become, and the more overwhelming they seem and the more tired I feel thinking about doing them, so these days I embrace the school of thought that says don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today. Problem is there are always a million things that have to be done today, and not one of them involves “being kind to myself” and believe me at the end of the list of must do there is no time for balance. So I love the theory, but in the end I think in practice it just won’t work for me right now. So my journey continues and maybe tomorrow I won’t feel so tired and will be able to do something for me. For now I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, no matter how heavy my feet feel, and working hard to believe that the best is still ahead.
