Balance

For the most part, balance is achievable through slight readjustments; in fact I find that I give easily and freely of my time, energy, and money, when I choose where I will spend them and do so of my own volition. On Friday I picked up a student and her mom and drove them to the dentist for an appointment they were both nervous about. Colleagues would tell me this puts things out of balance to spend an afternoon of my vacation time doing “work” but it did not feel that way to me because I chose it and because I wanted to remove that particular barrier for them. In giving this help to them I was giving something to myself as well.

This evening Shawn and I spent the evening with a neighbour whose wife died recently. Again this wasn’t like work because I wanted to be there for someone who is feeling alone, and who could use some friends right now.  We don’t really know him, but that’s only because we have never been the type of people who invest much energy in our neighbours, for whatever reason.  As we grow older (wiser?) perhaps we can see ourselves reflected in our community more easily. We moved into a neighbourhood in our early thirties at a time when it may have been more difficult to imagine needing our neighbours for anything... and now ten years later it is somehow very easy to picture ourselves in their shoes.  I invited us to his house very easily this evening- and I invited him to our home next week just as easily.  This is how balance is achieved, not by holding back our resources and hoarding them to ourselves— rather by spending them freely in places where it matters.



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