A Balanced Life

I love to celebrate happy events. I love celebrating when my favorite teams win a game, or when a friend comes to visit, or even when the news I watch and read is what I call good and not I call worrisome. And, of course, I love celebrating the sort of events all writers celebrate – the acceptance letter, the contract, the praise from my editor. I have a book coming out in about a month (Fearless Writing), and I’ll certainly be celebrating its release. It can get a little addictive, all this celebrating. It feels so good to be happy, and sharing that happiness with other people; and it feels so awful to worry, and complain, and correct, and fix. How easy it is to let life become a seesaw between celebration and despair, as if all our days are merely sporting events we witness, whose outcomes, over which we have no control, determine our well-being.

Writing is such a calming antidote to this addiction. Every morning I bless the utterly uneventful blank page. There is nothing to celebrate or mourn on that page, just the question of what I would like to see there. The answer to that question resides in a realm where, I have come to understand, nothing ever happens by our definition of that word. It is a kingdom forever in balance, and it is my goal every morning to write something that is a true reflection of the balance I always find there.

And when I feel I have succeeded in that, even if only for a sentence, I celebrate a little. It is so nice when the outside and the inside align. That is balance. I can’t celebrate for long, however, as I’m usually already onto the next sentence. To fully maintain my balance, I have to keep moving, I have to keep growing, for every question answered on the outside sparks another question on the inside. To live is to learn to love the question as much as the answer; to understand that finding balance is as satisfying as having it.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual and group coaching.