Balance

Life seems to always be a balancing act between what we have and what we want. It's also a balance between health, wellness and wholeness and dis-ease. My life right now is out of balance. Over the last two years, things have changed financially due to decisions on my part to start a 501c3, some decisions on my son's part to run afoul of the law (and the subsequent need to hire expensive lawyers), and assorted life issues such as an aging dog who appears to have lymphoma (and associated vet bills to try to manage). This financial imbalance then leads to unbalance in other areas, most especially my relationship with my wife. I find myself wondering, on the cusp of my 50th birthday, is this the law of averages catching up or some foul plan? I haven't come to an answer yet. One thing I do know is that our bodies work best when we balance food, exercise, challenging mind work, sleep and fun. Moving one of those items too far leads to the whole system being out of whack. Once that happens, if nothing changes, then our bodies acclimate to the new "norm" of unbalance. Since our bodies can take a lot of abuse before they break (thank G-d!) we move merrily through life with out paying much attention to the daily damage we're inflicting. Until something happens and the cascade of events is catastrophic. I can't tell you how many hundreds of times I saw this pattern lived out in the intensive care units I was staffing. "He was okay until he came to the hospital!" was a common refrain. Well, this wasn't true. He may have "looked" okay on the surface, but underneath he was a mess. All it took was one major break and the whole house of cards came tumbling down. Balance between all aspects of our life is the key to our journey. Bad or unfortuante things are going to happen to us - it's just the way the world works. This last year of my life has been awful in many ways, but the rest of my life has been better than most people in the rest of the world. While I could spend an inordinate amount of time whining about my "bad luck", I'm instead trying to see what wisdom/life lessons I can pull from this part of the journey. How can I begin to relate better to my family? How can I focus on the good instead of the difficult? Where is G-d in all this trial and travail? This week, take a look at your life and where you might be out of balance. Maybe it's excessive work; maybe it's overuse of alcohol; maybe it's other risky behaviors like not seeing a physician regularly (my current issue) for prevention and monitoring; you fill in the blanks. Make a promise to yourself and important others to do something about this/these imbalance(s). You'll be quite glad that you did. Peace for the journey, Dan