Tag Archives: truth

Harmony

For many years, and even in this blog post here from a couple of years ago, I absolutely obsessed over balance. Work/life balance, mental balance, balanced diet, balance, balance, balance. I don’t know why on earth we place so much value on being balanced! Balancing anything is really f*cking hard!  It is a constant push and pull between competing and presumably equal forces.  It takes so much concentration, so much practice, tremendous energy, and it can be really damn scary.  I mean depending where it happens and at what height, losing your balance can literally break you…forever.

I recall a debate that took place in my workplace several years ago. Concerns were brought forward to the boss that many of the staff felt that they didn’t have enough work/life balance. His response was literally “So what? It is not my responsibility to bring balance to anyone. That is a personal matter”. It might have been harsh, but he was right. I heard him. If I was working late, that was my choice. If I was was eating crap, my choice. If I didn’t have time for a yoga class, that was not his fault. I had a contract that stated I would spend 37.5 hours a week doing my job, and he would pay me for that. It didn’t bind me to working late night after night or to losing sleep worrying about clients or projects. It didn’t state anywhere that I agreed to remain in a state of constant distraction/panic related to my deliverable’s, my staff, or company politics.  Nothing he could have done would have changed that. No amount of ping pong tables or espresso machines or work-at-home days would fix it.  I mean, there are lots of great perks that employers can provide that make life a little easier, more enjoyable and productive, but balance is not something you can just install in the break room. Balance was on me and me alone, and by god, it was stressful! It was one more thing I needed to achieve in addition to excelling in my career, being a good mom, a good wife, sister, friend, daughter…on and on.

And you know what? Our whole family completely changed our lives, for the better, for more balance. Everything changed. Jobs, houses, towns, schools, schedules, you name it. Without a doubt, the whole balancing act became easier but it didn’t go away.

It is only recently that I have come to want something that seems entirely different than balance for myself. I don’t know where I heard the concept, or I would give all the credit to the source… maybe in a podcast, maybe overheard at a cafe or even experienced in a dream, but it shifted my perspective. It was the radical idea of abandoning balance in favour of HARMONY. A harmonious life, a life that sings.
Harmony

Doesn’t that just SOUND and FEEL better? A state of being where all of the parts of life flow together seamlessly, although in varying degrees. Where volumes, notes, instruments, etc.  can be adjusted and re-tuned…

What an absolute relief to look at life this way!

Someone I’m friends with on Facebook posts videos of her daughter doing gymnastics. Watching her on the balance beam stresses me the f*ck out. She never falls (or videos of her falling never get posted) but every second I feel she might. I always regret watching, even though the kid is amazing and will prob end up in the Olympics. Like, I DID NOT NEED THAT ANXIETY! Contrast that with the videos like this one that my beautiful niece Sophia posts, singing songs she wrote at her piano. The ones that make my hair stand up and tears stream and heart swell… you know what I mean? Can you relate? I’ll always take the song!

Honestly, at the end of the day, it might be a meaningless shift in perspective for most people, semantics really, but words have power and for me it changed my whole approach to living. To how, where, when and with whom I spend my time, how I direct my thinking, and how I make all of my choices large and small.  I feel more empowered to make choices that are in service to harmony. Don’t get me wrong,  I feel totally out of tune on the regular, I still have anxiety and wish for more hours in the day, but I never feel unbalanced  – and that is a HUGE win in my books.

 

Remembering 38

My crisis (when I realized I was not really being true to myself) started right before my 39th birthday. I remember the exact moment. I was shopping with my youngest son who was 6 at the time. He was looking for a birthday present for a girl in his class and he had observed that she had her ears pierced and he wanted to get her earrings. It was actually one of the sweetest times I have ever spent with him because he was SO thoughtful about it and so little. I had to pick him up to see into display cases and his cheeks were still pudgy and his hair was so soft. And it was just so much fun to shop for earrings. I told him that I thought he was getting her the perfect present and that I love earrings so much.

Because, I did and I do. Love earrings. So why, in the heck, did I not have my own ears pierced?

I desperately wanted them pierced as a girl and I begged for it. One by one my friends were getting earrings. It was agonizing.  It was just simply not allowed in my house. Because  “If Jesus wanted you to wear earrings you would have been born with holes in your ears!”.

Of course now I have a hundred come backs. Like maybe he wanted us to have a choice and oh, hey, what about my brother’s foreskin THAT HE WAS BORN WITH. Didn’t Jesus want him to keep that and not have it cut off for no good reason whatsoever? (So sorry to my brother for dragging him into this no longer existent debate and outing him as circumcised – Q: Is this a big deal? Do I have to get his permission for this? Can he sue me?).

I was told that when I turned 16 I could make my own decision. By the time I was 16 I was literally the only person I knew of that did not have pierced ears. I was a curiosity. I felt cool about it. People actually said things like “You don’t have your ears pierced? That is so cool”.  Later, when I got other body parts pierced, the fact that my ears were not pierced was even cooler.  I was legit cool. But that era has long past.

Case in point… my older son asked me one day a few years ago why my belly button looked weird, so I told him because when I was a teenager I had it pierced and I used to have a ring in it and it looked really cool. His response? “Having your belly button pierced is pretty much the opposite of cool”.

(Note to self. He must NEVER know about the nipple ring, and how both of my babies favoured that boob because milk squirted out the holes on the sides too.)

So at 38 … who was I being cool for? Um. Not a soul. Actually I was being totally uncool to my own soul. Because, as it turns out I never stopped wanting earrings. Actually, there are lots of things I never stopped wanting. Lot’s of denial. Lot’s of choices made for the approval of others, when really, what matters is being true to myself. It is starts with small steps, and it is a marathon, but one day I will get there.

On my 39th birthday I got my ears pierced. And I love wearing earrings. And I love when my sons buy me earrings.  I love that I have perky ear holes from waiting so damn long. Some of my friends complain that they can’t wear danglers anymore – but not me! Bring on the danglers!