Balance

I can't breathe some days. Can't fall asleep some nights, or it's with struggle, though I am exhausted and could fall asleep standing up.

It's the mind that controls the body. The mind that wants to keep running to find answers on paths for some peace but the body is weak and knows when to rest. They're an odd couple- the mind and the body. They balance one another out rather well.

On the nights when I can barely stay awake driving home and know I will not be able to fall asleep laying down, I take out my motorcycle. Then I am awake. I am alive and my mind can run down whatever paths it pleases, uninterrupted, and free.

We have untapped reservoirs of potential if we know how to use our minds. It feeds off of pleasures and failures both. When I am exhausted and mentally drained, the pleasure of a ride awakens it. When I fail and am near or in tears, I muster the strength to handle it and consider how to avoid feeling miserable ever again. Both, of course, end and lead to other pleasures and failures but they are both necessity. When I cannot focus and am sore at the gym, if we learn a new throw I love, my body and my mind feel refreshed. If it is difficult to learn or there is a struggle, I am exhausted and must focus on technique because, well, technique is best performed and learned when the body is already failing to reinforce good habits.

A long time ago now, the first time I went to Tanzania, my friend Laura and I were chatting in the jumba (large grass hut classroom) and she and I were talking about balance. I remember I said I didn't think there was such a thing and she was intrigued. Laura's so open minded and chill I'm not sure how far this really went with her, but it stuck with me and I've gone back and forth and my mind is unchanged. It's less amorphous now, but the only balance there is is how sometimes things are bad and sometimes things are good and sometimes you have too much and sometimes not enough. That is all. You'll never find perfect balance and nothing will ever be finished. We live in an entropic world that is never going to find balance. It makes life bearable really, because who would ever be satisfied with perfection?