Balance

Since I had the stroke, and suffered brain damage, I’ve had no balance. I lack the part of the brain that handles proprioceptive signals. So, I don’t know where I am in space. I’ve already written, in a past Slow Lane, how I’ve compensated by leaning on community, and letting others balance me. By and large this has worked — with a little learning on my part. As a result, I have a great appreciation for what we can do for each other. Today, I’m thinking of balance again, not so much about it, as about the tensions I always feel unseating me. These tensions assail me as I reach for a new temporary balance point. That’s what I want to focus upon, the dynamic tensions, the one’s that keep me poised on edge, balanced precariously, while reaching further.

Those in the academic world might call these stresses, dialectical tensions. To me, however, they are part of the complications that make relating so interesting. I am finding, as I get older (I’ll bet you are too), that keeping my relationships vital and meaningful occupies me fully.

I like relationship challenges, though I often find myself bemused, confused, humbled and stretched by forces I’m only now beginning to grasp. Balance in this realm is something more than physical. I am coming to rely on the sometimes contradicting, sometimes complementary, always paradoxical, forces at play.  Balance here is dynamic. These forces, the tensions that guide me now, keep pushing me into a zone of paradox. Here I seem to be growing, and I’m discovering that these same forces are re-balancing me.

I’m talking about relationship forces (or, tensions) that knock me off-balance for the sake of some greater, more functional, balance. Things like growth and harmony, closeness and intimacy, and completeness and wholeness. If you think about it, each can be complementary, and each can be in conflict with the other. It seems that they are great examples of how opposites attract, constellate, conflict with, and rely on each other.

Frankly, when I was younger, and less amenable to what is, I often got tired and dismayed by being buffeted around so much by these forces. I still do sometimes, but now, I know, they are growing me. I’ve learned that losing control, sometimes wisely surrendering, and being thrown ass over teakettle, frequently means that I discover balance where I wouldn’t believe it existed.

I’m still learning. There seems to be a way of immersing myself in the flows that these tensions generate, which introduces me to a zone of paradox. Suddenly, there is harmonious growth, intimate closeness, and temporarily complete wholeness. I don’t live there and cannot willfully go there, but sometimes I get taken there anyway — into this strange world where things morph into each other. I’ve come to believe that I have a greater chance of acquiring access, to the insights and capabilities of this state, if I could just make better friends with the tensions I notice around me. That has been easier said than done. Nature doesn’t seem to care, or it cares differently, because these tensions accost me, whether I’m ready to learn and willing, or not.

The tension that seems to exist between harmony and growth regulates my relationship life. These energies carry many things. Familiarity, comfort and aliveness, depend upon the right mix. Too much growth can make a place hot and irritating. Too much harmony can be stultifying — too cool. Without the right mix of intimacy and closeness, someone can feel unloved and uncomfortable. Similarly, being contented with self, or primarily chasing after self-growth, can throw one into self-distrust, rebounding against everyone. So, a lot is at stake, and the balance point is not easy to reach, or obvious.

These tensions bedevil me. They render my life perpetually off-balance, yet miraculously they also, if I can tolerate their discomfort, re-balance me. I have lived with them long enough now to trust that they will deliver me, not only to a new balance-point, but to a new paradoxical awareness. These tensions are connected, meaningful, and designed to bring me closer to my true nature. What I seem to be discovering is more than a new balance-point. Instead I find a more balanced awareness. Somehow, these delicate and subversive tensions transport and sensitize me. The struggle for balance they provoke becomes something else — a strange apprehension that Life is more than it seems.