Balance? What is this “Balance?”

Sometime on Friday evening — a time when I should really be winding down, thinking about all the great and wonderful things I’ll be doing over the weekend, that lovely and long stretch of time I get to spend with B., my gorgeous 22-month-old niece Maya, and all my favorite people — I bent down to pick something up on the floor next to the bed. At that moment I heard a loud Smack! and felt a tear-inducing sting of pain shoot between my eyes.

Uhm, Hello, Nose? Meet the bedside table.

Was it funny? Bien sur! Was it startling? Undoubtedly. I sat on the bed, my hands cupped over my poor nose, my eyes crossed and my brain trying to process the fact that, despite the bright light in the bedroom, I had failed to notice that — duh – the bedside table was between my face and the floor.

The last two weeks have been trying for me, both professionally and personally, and not necessarily in a bad way. Sure there was the burglary, the loss of my laptop, the haunting feeling that lingers even today as my mind occasionally wanders to that afternoon when I came home and found the home invaded and my mother’s beautiful engagement ring gone forever. There was the unexpected (but still totally worth it!) expense of installing an alarm system.

On the other hand, my writing and consulting business is flourishing like crazy, and I picked up a couple more clients over the last two weeks. I’m busier than ever, and I’m confident that this isn’t just a lucky streak. Sure, some of my bad karma came back to bite me in the a** in the form of a two (or three? Four) burglars, but the universe got my back, too — I’m doing even better than I had dreamed, and I fully anticipate that the business will continue growing, despite all the gloom and doom about the economy.

And yet, I still whacked my face on the nightstand.

That wasn’t the first time my body lost its sense of spatial relations, but it was certainly an interesting wake-up call. I have a tendency towards workaholism — an odd trait to have, considering that I’m Filipino and a Francophile, so please don’t take my membership card in either community! — but lately it’s been running full-throttle. Psychologically, I actually don’t mind at all — if you do any kind of freelancing and/or consulting, you know that work = money, so the more work = the more money — and I welcome the chance to earn a good income, especially in light of all the news reports about the recession and job losses, but at the same time I’m starting to realize that I’ve lost a bit of that all-important balance in my life and that I need to step back and reassess my priorities.

On the other hand, though, I think to myself, “Er, balance? What is this balance you speak of?”

I think of professional tightrope walkers (otherwise known as funambulists…so now you know) and how they make their vocation look so easy. And yet if you’ve ever tried it yourself — or even if you haven’t — you know perfectly well how much focus the feat requires. They may smile and even occasionally do the odd trick or two — wave their arms, juggle, carry other objects or even other people — but there’s no question that they have exactly one thing in mind: what they are doing at that moment in time. They’re not thinking about what they’re going to make for dinner, whether or not they left the oven on, or if their date the night before will ever call them. No, their sole purpose in life at that moment is to complete the task at hand. That’s it. That’s balance.

When I’m performing my own so-called “balancing act,” though, I’m doing anything but focusing. When I’m writing, I’m probably also half-listening to the TV in the background, maybe listening to CNBC’s pundits; drinking coffee or tea or water; thinking about what to have for lunch, or perhaps even having lunch; keeping on eye on what’s going on on Twitter; and brainstorming yet another article or assignment in yet another corner of my mind. When I’m in the shower, I’ll sing an old Hall & Oates song, but I’m also just as likely to be ruminating an argument I had with my mom while also mentally running through my endless to-do list. (Heck, as I write this, I have twelve — twelve! — tabs open on my browser.)

I have a Palm Centro that I bought primarily to keep my life in order, but more than once I’ve stared at the Task List with not a little sense of helplessness. And it’s not that I’m complaining, although I realize that I’m doing a pretty good job imitating a big ol’ whiner.

It’s just that when you get to the point where you find yourself with a big, bulky and otherwise completely familiar piece of furniture rising up to meet your nose, you sort of realize that Something Is Not Right With Your Life.

This is not balance. This is the complete opposite of balance.

Although I originally came to Francophilia through the now-familiar genre of literature spawned by the likes of Mireille Guiliano and Anne Barone — i.e., the Skinny French Women & How They Got That Way thread — one of the things that fascinates me the most about the French woman’s mystique is not the circumference of her waist or even the smoothness of her complexion (although I would still pay handsomely for those secrets!) but rather how they manage to maintain equanimity and poise in the face of life’s many, many challenges. I don’t doubt that generous paid maternity leave, near-universal healthcare, and the social and cultural worship of the art of femininity help tremendously, but surely those aren’t the only things that help them remain so admirably self-possessed.

During my interview with journalist and author Mariane Pearl, I asked her just that question. After all, if anyone in the world has the right to fall apart and let their emotions run away with them, it would be Mrs. Pearl. I asked her where she got her strength, her beautiful poise and calm, even in the face of horror and tragedy. I wondered if it came from her upbringing in France, or perhaps her family, her profession, or her Buddhist faith.

Mrs. Pearl attributed her inner strength to Buddhism, specifically her adherence to Nichiren Buddhism, which gave her the courage to face the biggest challenge of her life, when her husband Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and subsequently murdered by his captors in Pakistan in the winter of 2002. She has written elsewhere of the influence of that simple but profound faith and how it changed her life, and although she doesn’t proselytize and is in fact quite modest and discreet about her spirituality, the serenity she exudes tells you everything you need to know about the power of that faith.

Yesterday I had the privilege of watching just that power transform my own little corner of the world. I don’t recall if I’ve written of this before, but B. and I — although raised Lutheran and Catholic, respectively — have been visiting a Buddhist center off and on over the past five or six years. We’ve recently returned to the center after a hiatus of three years — interrupted partly by life’s circumstances, partly by our move to Colorado — and in the interim it had changed resident teachers. The previous monk, a wonderful and loving Brit named Gen Sangye, had moved back to England, and in his place was a jovial and soft-spoken Seattle native named Jampa.

Like many denizens of modern society, I resist the call of the church or the temple on Sunday mornings. The last few weeks have been especially difficult for me, as I can easily justify skipping yet another meditation/contemplative session for the sake of all the work I have to do, the clients I must appease. I can easily convince myself that nothing could possibly be as important as work.  But yesterday I went, and I am so glad. Actually, more than glad. I’m so happy I went.

Buddha in Japan, by Brian Lochlaer

Of course, people who come to the center do so for a million different reasons, and I’m sure that that all-elusive balance is but one of them. I personally go there to remind myself of the greater mission I and everyone else in the world have, the vast mystery of the universe within all of us and what connects us to each other. It stills my “monkey brain,” what Buddhist scholars and monks refer to the “constant chattering” in which our ever-busy minds engage. It may only last for a few seconds — perhaps even for just one second — but it’s long enough for me to experience that sense of calm that I long for. Jampa — and Buddhism in general — reassures us that we all experience this monkey brain, and that with practice we can all learn to overcome and eventually become fully awake (“nirvana”). For now, however, it’s all about the practice. Even if my fifteen-minute meditation is really more like fourteen minutes and fifty seconds of endless mental chatter about dinner and work and family issues and what’s on TV, that precious ten seconds of complete and utter silence and wonder is ten seconds of unity with something more divine and eternal than my petty worries. That’s ten more seconds of real life than I had before.

I still don’t know if I’ll ever achieve balance, but I can be more forgiving of myself when I whack my head on the counter. If anything, I like to think of it as the universe reminding me yet again to stop, wake up and focus.

What do you do to come back to your center? Do you have any practices or a particular faith that nourishes you when your life becomes unbalanced? Do you ever have actual physical moments of immediate clarity, such as that unexpected meeting between my nose and my nightstand?

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