Balance as an act of Faith in an Emotional World
Balance is an act of faith, and faith can essentially be stripped to mean confidence in someone, something, or a concept as the case might be. And as such, it leaves little to wonder, why staying sane in a world full of emotional triggers is literally a fine art of balance.
The masters say you can either pull up from the crown of the head or root down into the earth. But in reality, there is no magical thread connecting our heads or minds to the heavens. And neither is there anything beneath us other than our legs however they come, and earth.
The trick therefore to balance, using the masters’ analogy is to trick yourself into believing you have deep roots, or that you can fly -however you want to manifest that. Especially when all evidence says otherwise. And if you believe hard enough, you just might do the impossible or the possible that seemed impossible.
The above suggests that balance can be learned though. Might take a lot of time, and cost a lot in experience currency, but it is actually something that can be learned. And just like everything that has a pro, it could have its own con. We are human, and that means, we always want something tangible to hold on to. That means, at some point, our need for reality will outweigh the techniques, or measures we have used to ensure balance.
Balancing work and personal life might seem hard, and so could any of the other things you could think of balancing. Financial balancing, risk balancing, and so on. But I do believe that none of those come close to emotional balancing.
We’re constantly bombarded with a kaleidoscope of emotions, and for many of them, being fleeting is inherent. However, the fact that they are fleeting does not mean they do not leave residues.
And considering that we intellectualize our emotions a lot, and consciously and/or unconsciously avoid feeling our emotions, balancing could elude us the same way the residues of our emotions elude us.
Instinctively, I could suggest to you, how you should stop intellectualizing your emotions, and feel your emotions, but maybe that’s a topic for another day.
Today, you should know how the lack of balance in your emotional life affects every other part of your life — literally. Your work, routines, relationships, decision-making ability, and so on.
And it is kind of interesting that something could have so much influence on so many parts of our lives and we hardly ever see its residues from individual occurrences pile up to form a cancerous tumour in the emotions department of our brains.
Feeling, and expressing your feelings could come off as foreign to you, and as much as I want to recommend that you do feel your emotions unashamedly, if or/and when it ends in tears, I wouldn’t want tracebacks to me. Especially because I don’t believe the current societal construct allows for that.
But wouldn’t it be nice to pioneer something like this in your circle?
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. — C.G. Jung
More times than we care to admit, our ‘explosions’ or ‘outbursts’ are a result of a successful transfer of aggression, an inability or impatience to properly processes how we feel, our impulsive defensiveness due to past experiences, or our unknown negligence towards those feelings we termed as trivial.
Simply put, we do not address the root problem, so there is a high tendency for a repetition however frequent.
Despite the importance, much more than understanding some basic things like the difference between emotions and feelings, that feelings should not be classified in black and white terms like good or bad, and that those feelings should be felt, I believe it is really necessary to understand the importance of balance.
We can’t ride on a high all day, every day, and it is important to know when we are at a low, experience it without rushing it or downplaying the cause of the emotion, and the accompanying feeling.
Happiness is a skill, emotional balance is a skill, compassion and altruism are skills too, and like any skill, they need to be developed. That’s what education is about — Matthieu Ricard
Discovering that emotional balance can be the difference between you and a better you even though it sounds cliche. But it means, you find and understand your emotional triggers, you find a way to still go through life even on your ‘bad’ days, and you’re self-aware.
And as a reminder, balance is really an act of faith. Because there is no guarantee that you can balance the emotional hills and valleys in your life successfully, but you have to believe that you can.
The world is currently full of emotional triggers and it can be incredibly hard to stay sane on some days. On these days, I hope you find confidence in yourself to walk the line of sanity however thin it might be then.
I hope you practice balance in its finest form.
And if balance were such a thing as I claim it is, I hope you have enough to see yourself through life. And if it really were such a thing, I hope you find it easily, because what exactly is the point in romanticizing suffering.
If balance were such a thing, I hope you have enough clarity to differentiate between balancing yourself and helping balance someone else. But much more than that, I hope you have enough discernment ability, and courage to make the right decision whatever that might be.
If balance were such a thing, I hope that you’d get the best of it.
