The Inner Beam on Which We Balance

The fence upon which I walked as a child.

I’ve been walking a beam since I was a young child. I walked the fence my father built around our front yard. The beam was something physical beneath my feet then. Now it’s my sense of inner balance. It’s like I’ve always been trying to understand what it is to be in balance.

About 15 years ago, during a ritual, I finally put together the physical experience of balancing with living a balanced life. The ritual was built around getting to know the Ancient Egyptian goddess Ma’at. She’s the goddess of justice, harmony and balance. At some point during the ritual I felt a wavering energy go through me and I understood that to be in balance was to be in constant motion. It’s about readjusting as you go. Of course that was my experience as a child walking the fence, but I didn’t apply it to life. I didn’t have the ability to understand and put it together. 

As a teenager I started to believe that to live a balanced life was to live a static life. Everything even keel and perfect. There was to be no tipping the boat for this girl. I had too much chaos as a teenager after my father died. This skewed my understanding and I went through life feeling like something was always wrong since I couldn’t keep things “balanced” as I had come to understand it.

Now I walk my inner fence with grace most days. Sometimes I fall off and that’s okay. I bless the moment. To be thrown into chaos is the time to surrender and trust the process. I don’t have to control it all. It’s better when I don’t. I simply touch the ground, take a deep breath and climb back on the beam when I’m ready and the time is right.