Balance

When is it time to leave the table? What happens when we find ourselves making more wrong decisions than right ones?

It is a very good thing when someone can point this out to us in a friendly manner but for the most part, if all our suggestions are repelled with the idea that we are stupid to think like that, one does start to doubt one's ability to reason.

Being very unconventional in my approach to things, it has not bothered me to have people reject my suggestions. Lately there is a feeling that perhaps others are right, that most of my suggestions or ideas are not valid. Some are even hypocritical. How can I expect others around me to want to do something when I can't even convince my own household that it is a good idea? So that idea is put into a package, tied with cording and dumped down the well. No one will really notice that it is gone.

As I find myself walking down hill a lot, I remember the times that were, and know that I will probably never be there again. I used to walk upright and strong. Now I find myself weak and unable to even hold myself up. As I have questioned in the past, when did this happen? Was it when I said good-by to my parents? I don't think so. I was still very strong then. Was it when I was helping my children? I don't know about this, because it put a lot of cracks in my armor. Was it when my sister died and I lost my family? This was the point where I knew that I couldn't paste things together anymore. I wasn't able to help those around me. This was the point where I gave up a lot of the packages that I thought I could carry and maybe even do some good. This was a major turning point in my life. I have come many times to corners and have taken 90 degree turns to start or handle something that I had never done before but this turning point was much more than a 90 degree turn. It was a bend that almost broke me. Looking back, maybe it was a green stick break? Do those ever heal to the point of being strong again?

I just finished reading a 600 page book that was very well written and has been included in Oprah's book club. It was about life in the 1970s in India. The author tries to make you think it is a fiction book but I do not believe that. I think this author took things that he witnessed in his home country and wrote a fiction around these things. There is a lot of gore and mutilation in the book but running through it is a young main character who is trying to make sense of all of this. He is young and strong. He is intelligent and helpful. The name of the book is A FINE BALANCE. Throughout the book I kept waiting for this balance or even something fine but they didn't arrived. On the last page of this story the young main character can't find a balance either and jumps in front of a train.

Is there a fine balance that one can find in life or is it just a series of situations, puzzles if you will, that need to be pieced together? When one is cleaned up, be ready for the next one? At what point do we get to sit in a balance? Are these just moments in time? A phone call that is pleasant or a 4 hour party that is wonderful, are they the moments in time that we can use for balance?

What happens when the balance doesn't come? When we are thinking things that we know isn't right? Hey, we might not know that at the time but as we ponder them, we know. A lot of times they are pointed out when we express them to others. Mind you, mostly in a very unpleasant way. I think of how my Dad must have felt when my Mother started to lose it. Is that what is happening to me? Am I loosing it? Would it not be better to leave the table?

Perhaps that is why people get angry with me? It must anger people around us when we think like this. Would it not be better to jump in front of a train than to have everyone see the stupid things that you wish to do, thinking that they would be helpful?

This was not written to invoke pity but rather to sort my feelings and see what I can do to make things go better. By pulling back and not doing things, I wouldn't make mistakes. I could do things and then let them cool for a while to see if that would really be a good idea? I could talk to people about what I am thinking of doing, with the hope that they won't laugh, ridicule or holler at me. Perhaps I am blowing all of this out of proportion and taking on "their" problems, thinking that I am supposed to solve them, when I can barely solve my own?

A fine balance would be a wonderful thing. Perhaps the author was using the word "fine" to mean thin or narrow? I will have to look at it from both sides. Life is a thin balance? Just when you think you have something orderly, it falls out of balance. Perhaps life was meant to be that way to keep us interested instead of bored?

May our lives be a little boring from time to time.