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From the Winter 2001 issue of Barrow Street:
by Jane Hirshfield
Balance is noticed most when almost failed of-
in an elephant’s delicate wavering
on her circus stool, for instance,
or that moment
when a ladder starts to tip but steadies back.
There are, too, its mysterious departures.
Hours after the dishes are washed and stacked,
a metal bowl clangs to the floor,
the weight of drying water all that altered;
a painting vertical for years
one morning-why?- requires a restoring tap.
You have felt it disappearing
from your own capricious heart-
a restlessness enters, the smallest leaning begins.
Already then inevitable,
the full collision,
the life you will describe afterwards always as “after.”
There is something to this, this noticing of balance when you don’t have it anymore, like the old blues song “You don’t miss your water ’til your well runs dry.” If we want to achieve and sustain balance in our lives, communities and organizations then, I think it’s not a bad idea to engage in the practice of noticing it when you have it, rather than trying to identify it when it is about to collapse. At that point (a tipping point?), as the elephant is falling off the stool, or the dish is crashing to the floor, you are reacting to losing something you were only slightly aware that you had. The crises mode is exactly NOT the state you want to be in to contemplate balance again.
This kind of proactive mode of inquiry can extend to many other areas of life too. Peace? Do we have peace right now? What does it look like? Success? Stability? Happiness? Noting these thing now means that when they start to slip, you can remember what they were so that as you cruise and surf on the changes, you have an idea of where you might want to go.
Thanks to riley dog for the link.
