Balance

BY MEGHAN REEVE

Meg is a 34 yr old iced coffee drinking California girl living in the PNW. She is a tiny human teacher and a cheerleader for the dreams of not only the tiny humans but every human in her life. She strives to show others who they are by trying to be exactly who she is on the daily.

The other day, I realized that I was living life looking at my feet. Sometimes I literally have to--if I’m walking down the stairs in my house or if it’s snowed and I’m walking to the bus, I have to look at my feet to make sure I won’t trip.

But I have concluded that after the last 3 years of my life, I might be living life looking at my feet. Looking for the trip wires, looking for the potholes that I could fall into. Looking for anything that might cause me to fall and take me out.

Then I had a thought (because the Olympic highlights had been coming through all my social media feeds), what would happen if an ice skater or a gymnast just stared at their feet every time they jumped?

They’d probably fall a lot more. Their eyes lead them to whatever thing they are trying to avoid.

Instead, they look up, and in turn, they find a place to steady them, which is never the ground.

They trust their balance.

They trust the practice they have gone through; they trust all the falls that have taken; they trust the balance they have established.

I don’t think I trust my balance very well.

I think I just trust that I’m going to fall.

That something bad is going to happen.

After my mom passed last October, I entered a season of grief that I’m still actively in.

But it did lead me to a conclusion: bad things are going to happen.

People are going to die, illness is going to occur, people are going to leave.

And that’s not because we did something to deserve bad things.

It is just because that’s life.

Good and bad, ebb and flow.

What would happen though, if instead of looking at our feet, waiting for the next thing to run us over, we trusted our balance. We trusted that we can remain steady, and that if we fall, we will still be ok. And even if we aren’t ok--we will get there.

Trusting my balance is a new concept to me. Trusting that I don’t have to be scared that “the other shoe is going to drop” because I’ve gathered tools to get me through it.

Trusting my balance is something that is going to allow me, allow us, an ability to see things that are good in the world. When you spend your whole life looking at your feet, you probably end up missing what is all around.

Am I probably still going to get hurt? Yes.

But, at the end of the day, those things were going to happen whether or not I was trying to catch myself from falling. 

Trusting our balance will do one other important thing: it will allow us to find and cultivate hope. Hope that we can get through, hope that we can find the joy, and hope that a new day will always come.

So, together, let’s lift our eyes up, look all around us, and keep moving in whatever direction we need to go.