Balancing acts

A reminder to myself for the before, during, and after

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Worries run to the low side of a rolling ship, not the high side, so they can point over the railing and panic. Do they volunteer to help bail? No. Does their weight make the low side lower? Yes. Do they care that by doing so they risk increasing the risk? Not if their panic will get your attention.

Their job is to magnify or invent danger. Their goal is survival, not thrival. (It should be a word, right?) They don’t care how many times they stress us unnecessarily, as long as every time they yell “Boo!” we jump at least a little.

The past weeks (and months) haven’t made it easy to banish our worries below decks and stay on even keel. So I’ve been thinking about balance.

Years ago, during a (smooth, storm-free) Caribbean cruise with a few hundred fellow Zydeco music fans from all over the U.S., I shared several memorable dances with a tall broad-shouldered man named Scott. One of those dances stands out.

Our favorite Louisiana band, Geno Delafose and French Rockin’ Boogie, finished a wild set with a magical waltz that had each couple spinning around the aft deck like paired galaxies. Scott led me so well that I just closed my eyes and leaned back through every perfect turn.

The band took a break and Scott and I chose a bench by the ship’s rail for a “get to know you” chat. He was a Libran, he said, and therefore, “adept at staying balanced.” By then my friends included a disproportionate number of Librans, so I laughed. “When you’re dancing, maybe. But in your life, don’t you mean “regaining” balance? I’m guessing you tip too far one way or the other all the time, but always manage to scramble your way back to center.” He looked taken aback for a moment, but then he grinned at me sideways and said, “Busted.”

Me too. In my last post I used gravity wells as an analogy for density sinks where I lose perspective. Two of the blessings of having many more years behind me than ahead are knowing where my gravity wells are and knowing when I’m close to tipping into one. If I lean too far and fall in, I trust my friends to help me scramble out.

These are wild times. May you always find your way back to balance. And when you get the chance to, dance.