“Something is always born of excess:  great art was born of  great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.” ~Anaïs Nin

Ostensibly, I am in the business of balance. I mean, you hear acupuncturists talk about balance all the time, right?

And yes! Balance is good. But talking about balance from a purely theoretical perspective can sometimes miss the point.

Because in the midst of all this yin-ing and yang-ing, I feel like there’s something that often gets lost — namely, the reality of our lives.

 

Which scoffs at balance a little bit and thinks we’re silly for striving so hard for something so incompatible with our day-to-day existence.

And this is why I like to talk about alignment — an idea I personally think is equally (if not more) important than balance. Alignment, in my mind, makes space for the nuances of humanness in a way that balance can’t quite accommodate on its own.

Is this making sense? Maybe not. Let me try to elucidate this point further.

My life experience and my observation of other people’s lives suggests to me that balance is rarely happening in the way we might feel like we are supposed to be working to achieve. And balance is rarely happening in the way certain folks in the health and wellness industry pretend to have perfected, while trying to sell you the secret on how to cultivate it, too.

Probably they’re not really as balanced and zen and put together as they seem. Most of us aren’t.

 

Why? Because here’s the thing:  Life is messy and unpredictable, and it waxes and wanes in intensity. Sometimes it feels like it’s carrying you at a speed of a million miles an hour with no end in sight, and other times it feels boring and mundane and painfully repetitive.

There are days or weeks or months that are full of meetings and appointments and deadlines, etc. And then stretches of time — minutes, hours, days, and very rarely weeks or months — with little on the calendar and no urgent tasks at hand.

And while most of us probably feel like we’re living in the full, overscheduled, highly demanding version of our lives more often than we’re not, there are likely some pockets of downtime in the midst of the busy-ness if we’re aware enough to appreciate them when they arrive.

Still, life is generally not all that conducive to perfect (or even moderately decent) balance on a daily basis.

 

Especially if you are a parent or you’re self-employed or you’re working on an all-consuming creative project or you’re training for an athletic competition or you’re healing from an injury or illness or any number of other things that might throw a wrench in your balance-pursuing plans.

You know how folks like to talk about life being a marathon and not a sprint? Well, I actually think life is one big interval training session and that the work-to-rest ratio is an ever-fluctuating thing that is very, very rarely one to one.

At least not up close.

But if you’re running in a direction that feels good to you, is compatible with your values, and to which your intuition says a clear  “Fuck Yes,” then I say you’re doing fine. Even if the scales are temporarily tipped in favor of the accelerator over the brakes.

And this is why I like to talk about alignment. Because sometimes being in alignment means pushing hard and taking fewer breaks and working tirelessly on something that lights you up even as it pulls you out of so-called balance for a little while.

Alignment makes sense up close in a way that balance just doesn’t. Because balance for us human creatures really only makes sense through a much wider lens.

And we need both to live a good life. To be healthy, fulfilled, and joyful.

 

So let’s stop fetishizing balance, shall we? And stop feeling bad for all the ways we might think we’re failing to achieve it.

Zoom out. Work on balance from that perspective.

In the meantime? Make a list of your values. Check to see if your daily behavior reflects the things about which you claim to care the most. If not, adjust.

Is balance important? Yes. Absolutely. But it’s not the only thing.

Alignment matters, too. Because living from that place is how we move through the world with integrity. It’s how we match our actions to our rhetoric.

It’s how we stand up for the things we believe in and make a difference in a world that desperately needs more change makers to rise to the top and make change.

 

So if you’re feeling a little out of balance, cut yourself some slack. Maybe it’s for a good reason. Just make sure to tip the scales back the other direction at some point, ok?

This life is a steep, seemingly endless learning curve. And we’re all riding this wave together.

If you need some support along the way, you know where to find me. I get it. And I’m here to help.

xoxo