Balance is the ultimate landing place

​Life is a journey of opposites.

Joy and sorrow.

Strength and vulnerability.

Success and failure.

Light and dark.

Courage and fear.

Peace and chaos.

Giving and receiving.

You get the picture. We always seem to be swinging from one end of an opposite to the other. And if we're not careful, life can become all about getting to one end while doing everything we can to prevent falling into the other end.

It can become about finding joy while doing everything we can to deny sorry.

Some time ago, a friend reminded me when I was complaining about a 'dark' day that I would never appreciate and make the most out of my 'light' days if I never experienced the dark.

The lessons come, she reminded me, not in settling into one end of the scale, but in being open to learning what we can learn swinging from one end to the other.

Maybe the ultimate lesson learned is that life is not about settling in but about trusting that the lessons are leading me to a balance. To a place where I treasure the dark because I know it will make the light all the more light, and when I'm in that light I don't live afraid of the dark because I know that's where light is ultimately revealed.

I told a buddy it's been a long week of traveling and teaching and so I'm ready for a weekend of rest.

I would never want to live my life fully on the road teaching, and I'd never want to live my life fully lounging on the couch. Swinging from one end of that scale to the other has taught me it's the way they balance each other out that I need to treasure.

Life may feel extreme today. Maybe completely opposite from where you were last week or last month. And it may be hard to trust that balance is coming.

But it almost always does.

So learn what you can where you are while you can learn it. It will ultimately point to balance as the best place of all to settle.