Seeking Balance

January has just ended. Today is Groundhog Day, Imbolc, or Brigid’s Day. I am thinking about balance today.

January is a strange month. It is a month of hope, new beginnings, and dreams of great things! I think everyone I know began some version of a plan to eat “properly”, exercise more, start going to yoga, meditate every day, drink less beer, drink more water, and floss more often. We leap into the month of January with faith and resolve that this time we will make these visions reality. 

However, January is also a month of sadness for many. Here in the northern hemisphere it is still the dark ebb of the year; the tide of the light barely turned. It is a month of despair, of losing faith that it will ever be different. More people commit suicide in January than any other month. January is a month of absolutes, complete success and absolute failure. Whatever was good enough for us on December 31st is nowhere near enough on January 1st. 

It is strange to me, though. As many of us are plotting the great transformation of ourselves that will somehow spring fully formed on January 1st leaving behind the crumpled shell of who we 

were just the day before, I hear a great deal of talk about “balance”. “I’m finally going to have some balance.” “I’m going to prioritize taking care of myself and balancing my home life and work life.” There are endless variations on this theme. We see this grand plan of ours as the source of the fount of all things magical and sparkly: BALANCE! Finally, we will achieve it! 

Well, we have made it to February. How many times did you get to yoga? Personally, I haven’t even done a yoga video off of YouTube yet. So, here we are. Did you find “balance”? 

But...

What if balance isn’t a thing you find, or a thing you achieve, or a thing you strive for? What if balance is bigger? What if balance is the source of the struggle, the root of the tree instead of its fruit? In nature, balance is not a static state but a dynamic process.  Life buds, flourishes, over-reaches, dies back. The acids and bases in your body convert one into the other and back and forth, your pH rising and falling like a minuscule chemical tide. It swings, it cycles, it fades and fluoresces. Balance is not what happens when you stand still on one foot and don't fall over. Balance is what happens when you stand on one foot and sway tiny movements back and forth as your inner ear senses and your body corrects for the shifts and leanings so you only fall a little bit one way before falling a little bit the other and this all means that you never fall all the way. 

What if our goal is not to find balance, but to merely shift it a little? I may not give up cake forever, but maybe I can find a new recipe with more veggies that the kids will actually eat. That plan we all made to start our new year an improved version of ourselves was a wide swing out into space. By the end of the month most of us had swung back into the darkness again. We are entering February somewhere on the back swing. But, isn't that where the season is meant to be?

If you are one of the despairing, please know that you are not alone in your suffering. There are others here in the dark who have lost hope that the light will return. But that is the ancient meaning of this day: the light is returning. The balance is shifting. This northern place has leaned away from the sun, and now it is time to start the long lean back. Reach out a hand and find someone who can remind you how to turn back into the sun. That is the secret of winter: the light hasn’t really gone, it has always been just around the edge of the world waiting for us to come back.

Just in case you need it:

Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255) 

Because WE need YOU.