Balance

Throughout my life, I've been interested in balance, from my grade school efforts in gymnastics to coordinating a full professional life within a context of family. Since my father's death in November 2008, I have been reading Buddhist texts and practicing meditation, and I have arrived at a new appreciation for balance. I think I used to conceive of balance as a see-saw, where one thing weighed against another, and efforts at balance meant finding a way to make the board (me) level. The dichotomies I sought to level might have been work and play, self and other, children and husband, private and public, giving and taking. And so on.

My new sense of balance derives from the idea of unity or connectedness. Under the force of concentrated thought, divisions between self and other, here and there, now and later, dissolve. Balance is the recognition of being part of a cycle, a river of experience in life and death, a process of regeneration and decay.

"And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and every manner of thing shall be well."
(Julian of Norwhich) Thanks, Nicole.

Previous pages:Four Years;
Split Identity;
Son #1 at 2;
Motherhood;
Whiskers on Kittens
and Sunsets