Life is a… tightrope?
Story time!
One night I was reading a book with my daughters, and in it there was a tight rope walker. One of my daughters asked me how tightrope walkers “keep their balance”, so we talked about how they use a pole or their arms to adjust, and therefore, keep their balance and stay up on the rope.
And then it hit me: balance is a moving target.
It’s not a fixed point. It’s not like you balance on the rope and you’re good - you have to keep moving across. By the same token, it’s not like you find balance in your life and then you just stay there and you’re good to go forever. Sometimes the wind blows at you, sometimes somebody chucks a shoe at your head, sometimes something really unexpected happens when you were bracing in the other direction.
Let’s think of us as the tightrope walker, the rope as our journey through life, and that balancing pole as the coping skills that we have to help us cross.
What helps us not fall off that tightrope is that pole. It’s the ability to course correct, or readjust, or take a break and regain your strength and focus to find balance again. It’s using coping skills, taking time for self care, or learning and healing more, and then moving forward again.
And finding balance isn’t about being firm in any one direction. It’s finding that equilibrium between being red-faced angry at the world and not caring about anything. Or a happy medium being super strict with nutrition vs eating whatever you feel like all the time. Or finding a comfy spot between prioritizing work or play. But in whatever area you’re striving for balance in - it’s having and exercising the ability to not stand firmly in one spot, but rather to move as you need to and fluctuate to keep yourself up on that tightrope and not careening toward the ground below.
Another point that works beautifully in this metaphor (and if you’re a client of mine you probably know I LOVE metaphors) is that sometimes finding balance is easy, and sometimes its really really freaking hard. If nothing much is going on and you’re able to focus on the rope in front of you without distractions, you’re going to get across pretty easily. If the wind is blowing and somebody’s screaming at you and there are a bunch of obstacles to jump over and your kids are hacking at your rope with homemade weapons, it’s going to be a hell of a lot harder to keep your butt up on that rope. But remember your pole (your coping skills!) They’re there to help you. While it might be tempting to chuck the pole to the ground and cling to the rope for dear life - that’s not what’s going to get you across. It’s going to keep you in the scary icky uncertainty a lot longer.
There are lots of things that impact your walk across that tightrope and ability to find balance while you’re doing it:
You.
Literally yourself. Your strength at that particular time, either innate (some people are just really good at tightrope walking) or practiced (some people have put a whole lot of effort into learning and doing it well).
The other people around you.
If there’s somebody up on that rope with you thats struggling and grabs onto you while they’re going down, you’re going to have a tough time staying up there too. The reverse is true as well - if the people around you have put effort into their own balance and are managing themselves and not shaking your rope, you’re going to have an easier time.
Your starting point.
If you’re starting from a pretty calm space, anything that comes your way might be manageable. If you’re already shaking or leaning to one side, it’s going to be tougher. Same with life - if you’re already having a difficult time walking through and something devastating comes your way, it’s going to be harder to maintain balance.
Your foundation.
Maybe you’re a person who has a pretty firm, stable rope to walk on. Maybe you’re a person who is starting with a thinner, wobblier rope. There are lots of things that can impact this - your race, gender, privilege, class, abilities, etc. You’re going to have an easier time getting across when your rope is less challenging to begin with.
Your coping skills.
If you have no pole, or no idea that a balancing pole even exists or when to use it, again it’s going to be harder to stay on that rope. If you’ve practiced getting across, have your pole, and can prepare for whatever gets thrown your way? Again, easier time getting across.
None of those things necessarily make it impossible to get across. It’s just going to be harder, and a lot of those things that make it harder are things that are impossible or very difficult to change. We don’t get to choose when the wind gusts. We don’t get to choose when a kid gets sick. We don’t get to choose when we enter a global pandemic. So we work on the parts that we do have control over. Sometimes that is your starting point and managing issues as they arise so they don’t build up, and a lot of times it’s developing the skills to manage things when everything gets wonky.