A couple of weeks ago, I broke my toe. Even though it was only just a very little toe — a piggy, if you will — the break is really cramping my style. It’s hard to walk and hard to stand in one place, and it’s really hard to balance. It turns out that’s mostly what my little toe was for: Helping me keep my balance.
Which I knew, in theory. But sometimes you don’t know something deep down until it becomes so personal that you fall on your heinie, which is what happened to me the other day, when I tried to stand on one foot with a broken toe.
I have spent a lot of time in the last several years thinking about balance, and what it means, and what it takes. Not just physical balance, but something even more interior: Balance in how we spend our time, in how we speak and think, in our politics, in our relationships, and yes, in our spiritual lives.
When I was young, I thought poorly of balance, and compromise, and prudence, and that whole class of virtues that require you to stop, consider, and moderate yourself. I could grudgingly acknowledge they were useful for getting along in the world, if you’re into that kind of thing; but it was clear to me that these were the lamest kind of virtues. They’re a consolation prize for people with no passion, no conviction, no courage, and possibly no personality.
Most of the country feels that way now. I have some friends and family who are very far right and some who are very far left, and they all feel with their whole hearts that theirs is clearly the only honorable position. They also feel that the other guys forced them into it, because someone has to counterbalance all that extremism.
Even people who mean well are very much at sea these days. It’s really hard to know when to freak out, and when to chill; when to sound the alarm and when to pace ourselves. We don’t know when to protest, and when to let things ride, or when to reach out and when to denounce. We can’t tell when to draw bright lines and when to look for common ground. We have, in short, no sense of balance. People get yelled at for trying to maintain some balance.
Lately, I’ve been practicing a form of exercise which I shan’t name, because I’m just too tired to have that fight right now. Suffice it to say it sometimes requires me to stand on one foot. It requires balance. And I have learned that balance is not what I thought. … Read the rest of my first monthly column for The Pillar! Each article will be accompanied by a recipe.
(I did it, guys. I got someone to pay me to write about food!!)