Work-life balance just might be the great white whale of our time. It’s the thing that we are constantly seeking to conquer, yet never quite able to attain.
I work twelve hour days, seven days a week. I wake up before dark just to get my four miles in before the kids wake up. On any given day, I’ve got three companies to run, yoga to practice, reading to catch up on, and any spare minute is squirreled away for my writing projects. My husband and I high-five each other on the way out the door in the morning and pass out on the couch hours before the kids put themselves to bed at night. (Sexy, I know.) And on top of it all, I happen to have devoted my life to teaching how to live a peaceful and more meaningful life. So there’s that.
When I am upside-down in handstand, shoulders burning, sweat in my eyes, gripping the floor, trying to inch myself carefully away from the safety of the wall, I never feel balanced. If I keep seeking that magical point where everything will align and hold itself up, I will never find it.
And isn’t that exactly what we do in our lives? Try to juggle all those balls in the exact right way, so that every part of our life just holds itself up?
Balance isn’t a point that we need to find. It’s a way of being.
In handstand, this means that every point from the wall out to the thin air can be held in balance. And of course, I know this. I’ve seen people hover and lift into and out of handstand. They “balance” in all kinds of impossible positions. Obviously, they are not aligned at a perfect point, their strength holds them up.
Their strength is their balance.
Real life works the same. There is no point of balance. There is only being strong enough TO balance.
We can still create a beautiful life even when unbalanced, even when intoxicated with drive and ambition, or even when life is just asking too much of us in one area or another. With enough strength, we can hold ourselves in impossibly unstable positions. And in those moments, we may just find a life worth living. A life that, despite all of the difficulties and imperfections, we can call our very own.