Walking the Fence

I am practicing balance in my life

I grew up in Spring City, population 800. By "in" I mean 1.5 miles outside the city limits. Until I was about 10 the old highway road we lived on that stretched through the main street of town was 1 of only 2 paved roads. As a young boy growing up in a small town in the prehistoric age before smart phones, tablets, PS2, and the internet, my choices for entertainment were different than what my children have available. 

This is a recent photo of the house I grew up in from the age of 8 until I was 18. Although the trees are taller and the grass is not as green, it looks very much how I remember it as a child. During the summer months I spent a countless number of hours trying to learn to balance and walk across the top of a wooden fence that encircled our house and several sections of the garden area in the backyard. It was a challenge to maintain my balance on the long wooden poles used to build the fence. Many of them were uneven, knotted, and irregularly shaped. It took numerous tries to learn to even stand still and balance myself without falling. I would put my arms out in both directions to maintain my steadiness and eventually started taking careful steps. I would see how long I could go without falling and eventually I was able to cover the length between two fence posts. I then had to learn to carefully traverse around each post to make it to the next section.

I started to keep a mental record book of how long I could stay atop the fence and how far I could walk across it before losing my balance. Even after becoming proficient it always required my full attention and focus to avoid falling. Any time I allowed for distractions or let my mind wander from the task at hand I would most certainly slip off.  Those falls were usually without incident but it also took some patches of skin off my legs and left a few long scratches on more than one occasion.  

Living an authentic and healthy life that is true to who I am, requires me to pay careful attention to balanced living. I need adequate sleep and nutrition to function, but I need far more to be balanced and healthy. I need connection, safety, adventure, challenges, affection, exercise, solitude, goals, spontaneity, plans, openness, boundaries, surprises, tradition, spirituality, and a great many other things to live in balance. 

When any one area of my life becomes over emphasized, or if I find myself living from a place of deprivation, either of these circumstances can bring me out of balance. With awareness and practice I can learn to be more conscious and responsive to these shifting needs, but it will always require focus and attention. If I do not prioritize the nurturing of each part of what constitutes my true self I will find myself slipping and falling. It can feel exhausting and difficult to walk my path, but it becomes even more difficult if I am constantly losing the balance I need to create positive momentum towards my goals. 

Today I will focus carefully on what areas of my life have become unbalanced and do what is necessary to bring myself back into alignment.

What do you need to restore the balance needed to work toward your goals?