Equinox/balance

I love fall.  Cool nights, crisp, brilliant days where the sun in the coloured leaves creates a vibrant contrast against the blue skies.  The days are growing shorter, and we are approaching the autumnal equinox where the days and nights are of equal length.

The equinox is the fulcrum on which the seasons balance.  It is the balance point between dark and light, between summer and winter.  Yet it's only a moment on a continuum...so elusive, so fleeting.

Balance has become such a buzzword in our society.  Finding the work/life balance, balance this, balance that.  Blah blah blah.  What does it really mean?  Is there a magic formula where activity (a) gets x%, and activity (b) gets y%, and all will be well?  Uh...no.  

Now this sucks if you're anything at all like me.  I admit it - I'm one of those people who fantastizes about one day "getting it all together." I'll find the perfect balance and live happily ever after.  The older I get, the more I realize that this is just as elusive as the equinox.  "Perfect" balance doesn't exist except for the briefest moments in time.  Unless you are in stasis, balance requires constant adjustment.  Constant refinement.  Constant discernment.  It requires mindfulness.  I would hazard a guess that going on auto-pilot rarely results in balance.  It might result in achievement, but not balance.

Something in a state of perfect balance is completely still.  A rock balanced perfectly on another rock cannot move lest it break out of that perfect state.

Life is far from still.  So perhaps we need to redefine what "balance" really means. 

Waking up is hard to do

In my last blog entry I had the revelation that I needed more fire in my life and I ended my blog by stating that I was off to start one.

Well, here I sit a week later with a couple of sticks of wood, some matches and a blank look on my face.

The only thing burning around here are the questions in my mind.

Like this one.  Just how does one live a creative life filled with passion and joy and connection and spontaneity and still manage to run your life at least somewhat smoothly?

How is it possible to foster my own creativity and give to myself while still being an engaged parent, running a household, maintaining a reasonable relationship with my spouse, and working?

Suddenly what seems so simple becomes a little more complicated.

Who comes first?  Do I put my needs first?  Or those of my family?

Now I know what the self-help gurus would say.  If I give to myself first, then I have something to share with my family.  If you fill your own cup, you can share with your loved ones when it overflows.

I may be way off base but I wonder how many of these spiritual "experts" have actually lived in an intimate relationship with another human being.  

Relationships take time and effort to maintain.  Sometimes quite a lot of effort actually.  I'm not making a judgment on whether or not that effort is worth it or not worth it, simply that being in relationship with another human being takes effort.  And energy.  And compromise.  

And so I struggle because my time is not entirely my own.  My choices have to reflect my responsibility to the important people in my life.   

I know people who have made great sacrifices to their families and relationships in order to have careers as artists.  I did not, and would not, make similar choices.  I don't think that means that I'm less committed to being an artist, it just means that how I am an artist is going to look very different than it does for someone without these kind of intimate relationships to care for.

So...where does this leave me?  

It boils down to a question I'm sure many, many people can relate to.  

How do I balance my own needs with the needs of others?

It would be easy to simplify this into a black and white issue and to be seduced by the certainty of pronouncements like:  "In order to give to others you must have something to give.  Give to yourself first."    

In principle I agree that you can't give away what you don't have.  I firmly believe that we need to keep our own pilot light lit.   It's just that doing this is not as straightforward as it may seem.  My take on it?  It's not simple.  It's not clean cut.  It's messy and exasperating and will drive you bugs.   There are no straight lines, no simple answers, and there is plenty of room for getting it wrong.  It boils down to this.  Sometimes you need to put yourself first and sometimes you need to put others first.  

How to do this is another question entirely...

I've been sleeping...

I've been sleeping.

Not the peaceful slumber filled with dreams.  The kind of sleep that means you're really just a zombie.

In the guise of being a good mother, a good wife, a good employee, a good daughter, a good person...I've fallen asleep at the wheel of my own life.

Sleeping people colour inside of the lines and then neatly put all of my crayons back into the box.  Sleeping people use beige and grey and black.  Neutral colours.  They tell themselves that they're being mature and reasonable.  Solid.  Stable.

They're trying to be safe.   

Bright colours remind me of a time when it was all fuschia and crimson and blood red - fire.  Fire that was vibrant, shifting, unpredictable, beautiful, but it could burn. Burn too hot and you turn to ash.

Right about now you're probably scratching your heads and saying "whaaaat??"

Let me try to explain.  I used to live a life that had a lot of red in it.  Great cresting highs and tumultuous lows.  It wasn't always easy, and sometimes I feared that the low I was in was a place I would stay.  As much as I loved with a fiery passion the path I had chosen for myself, sometimes I feared that the fire would burn me and my loved ones all to ash.

Then my life changed.  We decided to move back to Alberta.  I suppose some might say we were "settling down" finally.  Growing up.  But the circumstances around our return were not of our choice - grave illness, loss.  These were circumstances thrust upon us that we had little choice in.  So we did our best to muddle through.

But that muddling at some point became something else.  It became normal.  Behaviours that arose from necessity somehow became the way things were.  The crimson flames became scary, and the beauty of them was lost on me.  There was plenty else that was utterly unpredictable and dramatic in my life, so who needed fire?

Apparently I did.  Or at least, I do now.

In the name of "balance", I have become radically unbalanced. I've forgotten that I like fire.  I like the unpredictability and the warmth.  The passion.  The vibrancy.  Instead I've told myself that grownup people are solid and stable and beige.  They don't go around being dramatic and fiery, they are sensible and paint their walls in neutral colours for better resale value.

In an attempt to be mature and responsible, I have worked to implement chore charts and routines, I have set down weekly plans to make sure that my time was being used efficiently, I have invested in budgeting tools to categorize and track our expenses.  I've told the artist inside to grow up and act like an adult.  I had to act like an adult.  I had people to take care of, responsibilities.  I needed to be predictable and solid and beige.  Not changeable and passionate and red.

What did this accomplish?  Was I actually more efficient?  More productive?   A better wife/mother/daughter/friend?  No.  I wasn't.  Because although on the outside I was doing everything "right", I wasn't feeding myself.  I told myself that it didn't matter.  I told myself that this was my life now.  I told myself I didn't miss it - didn't miss all the neurotic behaviours, the bullshit, the way it made me crazy.

But I was sleeping.   

My life became something I let happen.  Each week exactly like the one before.  Some days where everything went smoothly and some days where it didn't, but there were seldom days where I came home and said "Wow!  I had the BEST day.  It was so incredible!!!"  Mostly my days were defined by an absence of something - the day went well because nothing went wrong. 

I didn't know what to do.  I didn't know what I wanted.  This was supposed to be what adulthood is like right?  Well, it made me want to run away.  I hid.  I numbed out.  When I wasn't at work, I cloistered myself in front of my computer, checking for emails or watching Facebook for any updates.  I craved connection, I craved....

What?  What did I crave?  I didn't even know.  When I asked myself the questions that are supposed to get you in touch with your inner desires - things like "what would you do if money was no object?" - I couldn't answer.  I didn't know any longer.

For so long I had identified myself as a singer, but I've barely sung a note in almost 3 years, so what does that make me?  Nobody.  I'd lost myself.

Then a few things collided to wake me up.  This bit was the kicker.  Tonight, after rehearsing with a colleague for a duet that I will perform at our student recital, I went downstairs to talk to my daughter and she told me "Mom, you need to sing more.  It makes you happy."

In a flood I realized what I'd been doing.

All those hours wasted hiding in front of the computer, all that time craving connection and yet not wanting to connect to anyone, even my own family.  Knowing that I was hiding from them too and feeling horribly guilty about it but not knowing what to do.

I thought the charts and the routines and the solid neutral colours were making me stable.  Making me a rock to cling to in rough waters.  But all they've really accomplished is to make me beige and grey.  I'm bland.  I'm the colour of puked up oatmeal.  I'm turning to stone.  The hard layers I've built up around myself in order to be that rock have instead trapped me.    

In trying so hard to be a good mom, a good wife, I had neglected what makes me, me.  Ironically by trying to be "the perfect woman" I've robbed my family of ME!!

So what now?  Well, I'm waking up, and I think I'm going to go and build myself a fire.