“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.” – Thomas Merton
Are you bouncing back and forth from one end to the other on this learning journey called life?
Had your heart broken by giving all your love to another? Next time, you vow, “I’ll not be hurt like that again,” so you withhold a piece of that love in future relationships, out of self-protection.
Had your trust in authority destroyed by someone you admired and believed in? Well now, there’s a good enough reason not to trust anyone in the future.
Shared a formative story from your past with someone, only to have it belittled or dismissed? Hey, there’s your excuse to shut down any vulnerable, connective conversations in the future.
Something goes awry and we whisper to ourselves, “Never do that again!”
We ‘always’ and ‘never’ ourselves away from balance, peace and confidence.
It’s hard to create those internal experiences by bouncing back and forth to either end of any spectrum, whether it’s love, or trust, or hope, or success, or patience, or winning, or failing, or any of the other countless spectrums of human experience.
Visit the ends—we all do—and then inch your way back to a place between.
Because it’s just too darn easy to fall off when standing on the edges of all or nothing.
“We come into this world head first and go out feet first; in between, it is all a matter of balance.”– Paul Boese
