Monday, March 28, 2011

Balance




After the Banff Film Festival World Tour

I always get this really conflicted feel after watching movies like those I saw tonight.  Like I want to go out and do big things, and leave a giant footprint out there somehow.  But I don’t know exactly how, only that I want to do it outside and in a big way. What is my calling?  I don’t know.  When I have an office job, I can’t wait to go outside and play.  When I have a job outside playing, I can’t wait to get home.  Am I just plagued by the ever popular “Grass is Always Greener” curse?  Perhaps.  But maybe I’m just conflicted.  I need to find balance.  For my 30th birthday I want to hike the part of the Appalachian trail that’s in Great Smoky Mountain National Park.  At first I thought, “I should invite a bunch of people and that would be awesome.” My next thought was “I should do it on my own.  Alone.”  Which, if you know me, you would know was totally counter to my nature of thriving in groups and on interactions with people.  But I think I am seeking balance.  I feel like I have this big justice balance that represents my life, but instead of the scales being empty like they are on the statue, they’re loaded.  On one side is family and houses, warm – wait, I take that back - HOT showers, shampoo, face wash, theatre, 2 pairs of jeans and a microwave, and on the other is a pair of running shoes, canyoneering rope, climbing shoes, a tent, a nalgeen and a pee rag all stuffed into a red Osprey backpack that hasn’t seen nearly enough trail time.  Right now the hot shower side is tipped SO low that the Osprey side is in danger of being flung off.  Where’s the balance?  When I first move to Salt Lake City, when I first began this life with my husband it was the exact opposite.  He put the climbing shoes, canyoneering rope, tent and pee rag on the other side and tipped my scales all out of whack and now I’m searching to find out what I want to keep on either side and how to balance the scales again.  The hot showers are definitely staying, that much I know.

But how do I find the balance?  Maybe it’s this ever elusive thing that is always being thrown off by one thing or another.  Perhaps all of life is this finding of balance, rather than being balanced, and I should be happy with that.  There’s this quote, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.  Do not now seek the answers that cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is to live everything.  Love the questions now.  Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Here’s to finding balance.

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