Searching for Imbalance

March 25, 2010

        Imagine in your mind a seesaw.  A teeter-totter to some.  Or, if you will, image a scales with two sides with little metal bowls hanging from chains opposite each other.  Whether the image in your mind is a seesaw or a scales is only important to the extent that you can visualize the concept of balance between two sides.  Got it? 

        Now examine your balance.  Look closely at the image in your mind.  Look closely at each part of it.  The seesaw has a fulcrum right in the middle of a long, flat board.  Maybe it’s painted red or yellow like the ones in the schoolyard when you were a kid or in the park down the street.  You are not on the seesaw and it is empty in your mind.  It is as if it is frozen and motionless when you walk up and see it. 

        If your image is a scales, look at it closely as well.  Examine it very closely.  See every details of its parts, from the base, which holds the main vertical support column or stem, which supports the horizontal branches extending outward.  Do you see the chains on the end of the branches that hold the bowls?  Step back and take a look.  Imagine that you have just walked into a room and you see the scales frozen, like the seesaw, and motionless.  Got it?  Take your time.  This is important.  The image in your mind forms the basis of your life.

        Is the seesaw or is the scales in perfect balance or not?  Is one side higher than the other and consequently, and inherently, the other side lower than the other?  Or are the sides perfectly aligned at the same height?  I mean “perfectly”; not even the tiniest bit asymmetrical.

        What you see is the balance of your life.  You may see imbalance if one side is higher or lower than the other, but it is balance nonetheless.  Balance may not, to you, be that fixed position where everything is equal.  Think about and consider that for a moment.  It may not be your ideal of “perfect” balance, but it is balance.  A tightrope walker across Niagara Falls is balanced, although he sways and shifts his weight all the way across.  Unless he falls off the cable suspended between the sides, he is in some sort of balance.  Gravity does that.  In a way it is like balanced imbalance.  Asymmetrical symmetry.  Both can be good but it depends upon how you perceive it and then how you exist with it.  Imbalance, as long as it is balanced, can actually be a good thing, like a sprinter who leans forward down the track just so far that it helps propel him or her faster.      

        Now, try to imagine that the law of gravity does not apply to your balance in the way your life has demonstrated that it applies.  Imagine that the law of gravity is reversed.  The more weight you place on one side of your seesaw, the higher it rises.  The less weight you place on it, or the more weight your remove from one side, causes that side to go down.  Reverse gravity.  Not “no” gravity like in outer space.  Reverse gravity where everything is the opposite of what is true on Earth.  In other words, the apple that bonked Sir Isaac Newton on the head and caused him to finalize his documentation of the earthly phenomenon of gravity, would detach from the apple tree and fly upward into the sky.  Got it?

        Your life is a continuous sequence of balances.  How you perceive each side of your scales determines which side dominates your perspective, attitude and the balance itself.  Your scales is one weighted or weightless with your emotions, mentality and spirituality.  Your scales is a scales that works in reverse where either joy or sorrow are lifted up on the balance with the preponderance of weight rather than weighed down.  The life you lead and how you react, or not, to the things you encounter determines your balance or imbalance.  Your perspective on the imbalance or balance determines the state of your being.  Your life is your search for imbalance.   

         

I Never Truly Knew, Part 1

I never truly knew or even stopped to consider what it means to be without you Lord, in eternity and in anguish, until I lost something precious here on earth.  Loss comes in different ways and is different in reaction by us all. 

Loss can be gradual, where the heart is torn bit by bit from it source, as it also grows to become a thing, though dreadful, expected and to which we can learn to bear up against.  Gradual death comes nonetheless and creates a loss that cannot be returned. 

Loss also comes, it seems most tragically, on sudden terms.  Although we know death is coming to us all, we do not allow ourselves to consider that is may come now, or in the next breath.  In any event or any anticipation, death meets us when he pleases, not as we might wish. 

Sudden death, for causes known or unknown, creates a void more potent than that created by years of agonizing wonder.  Never can words be heard by one gone from this life, nor can we ever hope to convey our true heart or intentions to one whose light has gone out and whose cares are terminated.  Cares are left for those who remain.  Sudden death leaves many cares and hangs in the air like cigar smoke on a windless porch.  It doesn’t move from its view except enough to remind us that it is still there. 

Loss breaks the heart of those left behind.  Hearts that must find where peace lies in the past and where hope waits on the next step.  Loss is not confined to death.  In fact, loss without death can be more painful and agonizing than a separation of life.  For loss with life means that the source of the loss, and the reasons therefore it, remain as present reminders of mistakes made and choices that changed your world in a moment.  Though we strive with all our will to overcome the effects of this loss, they see us in the mirror of our lives each day as we try to do our best to be better and ease the pain the loss has caused and which will not cease easily or without the passing of much time and feeling of much regret.  

I miss you then

How does life change course from one day to the next

When life was everything life was about

You and me

How can wind cease to blow through the hills

The sun no longer shine

When and why

You were the wind and the sun in the day

You were the moon at night

I don’t understand

Lovers live as long as love lives with them

When a breath separates the two

Why hold our breath

There is never a day or night that you

Are not on my everything

Are you coming back

Without your touch life is not the life

My heart aches to touch again

Is your heart there

Darkness and agony live with me now

You left me alone to die

To and by myself

Is there never a word to say more

Our days of delight now spent

Will you speak

I have done my worst and felt alone

I have done my best too

I’m still alone

My every sense and thought are you

I have no other way to be

It hurts to think

Since I’ve been loving you

You are my soul

Where are you now

If you say you are gone for all time

I’ll never be the same

I miss you then

In my new perfect world...

In my new perfect world I could do what I wanted without regard for consequences and stop doing what I was told to do based on a principle handed down without debate and followed because someone had once said it was the right thing to do. Someone long dead and whose exact words no one remembered, but were enforced anyway. No questions asked. I was too afraid to ask. Asking was rebellion. Rebellion had bad consequences. Do what you’re told! I needed my own system that could tolerate the questions and serve my purposes, whatever they were at the time. A loftier dream. Life is very convenient when you create your own system. As long as the system keeps working.

It didn’t. 

--Salvation Of An Attorney

Salvation - I remember...

I remember those days sometimes, on the lazy, simmering street in front of my grandmother’s house in Florida. It was the same house my mother was born and raised in. My grandmother rented a room to help pay the bills after my grandfather died. I never knew Mawmaw didn’t have any money. I didn’t know what the Great Depression was or that its impacts would last to my generation.

I was eight. Eight was a good year for me.

We didn’t have any money either but I didn’t know that when I was eight. Life’s golden

when your imagination can make you anyone you want to be. When you can still get close enough to your dreams that you believe they’re possible, sticks become sabers, old tractor tires become space ships, and thready bath towels and a couple of clothes pins can transform you into a flying super hero. When you can do things that most eight-year-olds can’t, like catch a soaring punt on the run, throw a wicked curveball, or hold your breath under water for over a minute, it’s all good.

When money doesn’t matter.

Enough

In the midst of all confusion, you are here and that is enough.  Though doubts and fears and the unknown rule the day, you are here and that is enough. 

When angers and frustrations and wonderings of why appear and rub the wounds, you are here and that is enough.  

Enough to quell the spells of evil and its desires to deviate your ways.  Enough to satisfy each need to grieve and cry and let down the guards of desperate searching for the answers that do not readily seem apparent but which are always in your control.  

Enough is the cradle of your arms each time it is a touch that must do, to ease the cringe of disdain and the blank stare of misunderstanding.  

Enough are your words and ways, when solutions find no partner in comprehension and place themselves well beyond what is known or perceived without your eyes to see.  

Relinquish, then, my will and desires to know on my own or in my time your plans and designs, your timings and methods, and every perfected intention, and trust that your words are true, today and tomorrow as they have been on every yesterday.

Life Laid Bare

My life laid bare upon your feet

Vulnerable by its completeness

No greater compliment can I give

Than knowing my inner weakness

Never have I knelt before

Willing and eager bound to die

To self alone outside your sight

Ready to offer every why

Naked before your gaze today

Ever bare to every thought

Love regarded as encountered

Purest sense of feelings wrought

True love always sacrifices

A pedestal of me

Kicked aside to even ground

So that eyes to eyes we see

Given freely everything

Mingled intertwined to you

Identities grown to be as one

Being what each other knew