On Balance

I’m not good at finding balance.

Going forward has always been easy for me. I struggle with staying still, and even more with moving backward. I want to always be doing something, always making progress.

If I have free time, I’d feel much better going on a day trip to Tahoe than staying home, doing nothing, watching TV. I want every moment to feel like it has meaning.

But I’ve started to notice something else. My body is pushing back. I start the week already tired from the tahoe trip the day before. My body retains so much water. My energy feels off.

It feels like my mind wants to keep moving forward, while my body is asking for a break. And most of the time, my mind wins. It overrides what my body is saying.

Sometimes that looks like discipline. But when I push too far, it turns into tension.

I’ve been reading the Tao Te Ching recently. There’s this analogy of the bellows (橐籥):

“天地之间，其犹橐籥乎？”

A bellows works because it’s empty. That empty space is what allows it to generate airflow, over and over again.

I think I’ve been missing that part. I haven’t been leaving space.

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At a higher level, everything seems to follow this kind of balance.

There’s Yin and Yang. Not just Yang. There are good phases and low phases.

Life moves more like a wave than a straight line. The right move isn’t to force it forward all the time, but to read where you are in the cycle.

When things are going well, you ride the wave and move fast. When they’re not, you step back and let energy rebuild.

I’m starting to see there’s a lot of wisdom in this. I’m learning how to stop fighting the rhythm, and instead align with it. "Simply Being."