The Proper Amount

We need enough of the world to feed us! We don’t need too much.  Balance.  I am not good at balance.  I tend to go all speed ahead.  I tend to concentrate 100% … we call it focused. 

But today, I colleague described me – post-surgery—as slower, as walking slower, as talking slower.  In these past few months, I have been forced to rethink the necessity of balance.  My own sense of my fragility makes me walk and talk and move with more care, to move with more awareness of balance.  In the answer is not in the extremes; the answer is not abstinence or gluttony, losing or gaining, thoughtlessness or obsession.  The answer is on the balance beam in between, and this is very hard space for me to find, and it is harder space for me to maintain.

Benedict claims that we do it anyway, without grumbling.  Sr. Joan speaks says that “thoughts affect feelings.”  In today’s lexicon, perception is reality.  Think it, imagine it, make it real.  Here is the real focus: slow down, balance the spirit and the mind and the body, balance the communal and the individual.   Yoga practices do this with breathing and balancing the muscles: the left and the right, the core and the back, the legs and the arms, the inner spirit of breath and the outer strength of solid muscle.  If we balance, and each of us have a unique balance, we do not fall.