Getting off the seesaw
Sometimes I feel as if I live two lives. There is my rich, internal life, and my ordinary, sometimes delightful, sometimes dismal external life. My logical, structured side and my creative, associative side bump into each other with equal force. I'm a shy, introverted person whose primary job responsibilities are meeting people and conversing with charm and persuasion. I'm a very earthy woman whose spiritual, otherworldly side speaks to her nearly every moment of the day. I'm a home body who loves to travel.
So, I'm contradictory. No big deal. Most people are. My awareness of the dichotomy in my life though is strong and sometimes painful. It's why balance has been such a dominant theme in my thoughts and my actions over the last few years. I've felt the consequences of letting one side take dominance, and I didn't like it. Too many things suffered. When I was deeply into developing my creativity and writing, my financial and paperwork skills spiraled downward. When I became too involved in the actual service to others that is a vital component of living as I feel a Christian should, I ended up feeling drained of inner resources. My quest for balance though has been on the most childlike of terms -- a swinging seesaw that eventually levels out.
What I am coming to realize is that balance, while important, may be only the first layer of this driving need. The next seems to be integration, and that means tearing down more walls. Can I be creatively logical? make my home wherever I may go? show and experience the richness and abundance of my inner life in the external world? My instinct resonates with a yes so strong that my body feels tangibly energized and calm at the same time in some wonderful chemical release. I have no clue how to do this though, and this might be the real change underneath all the other recent changes in my life.
For sometime now, I've been musing about integrity. The aspects of honor, reliability and trustworthiness have been there naturally, but the primary emphasis has been on wholeness. My tangential mind leaps here to healing in that healing restores a person to wholeness. The last few years have left me feeling like I've just been soldiering on despite suppurating wounds, and I'm giving myself credit here for the courage I haven't recognized in myself before. I do know how to endure with a semblance of grace and even style. It's time for more than that though.
Tearing down the walls that make the different aspects of myself feel almost like enemies isn't going to be easy. I'm integrating the internal neighborhood. It will involve taking honesty with myself and respect for myself to a new level. It means bidding goodbye to the duality I somewhat enjoy, but I also know that it's what I need.
balance
integrity
So, I'm contradictory. No big deal. Most people are. My awareness of the dichotomy in my life though is strong and sometimes painful. It's why balance has been such a dominant theme in my thoughts and my actions over the last few years. I've felt the consequences of letting one side take dominance, and I didn't like it. Too many things suffered. When I was deeply into developing my creativity and writing, my financial and paperwork skills spiraled downward. When I became too involved in the actual service to others that is a vital component of living as I feel a Christian should, I ended up feeling drained of inner resources. My quest for balance though has been on the most childlike of terms -- a swinging seesaw that eventually levels out.
What I am coming to realize is that balance, while important, may be only the first layer of this driving need. The next seems to be integration, and that means tearing down more walls. Can I be creatively logical? make my home wherever I may go? show and experience the richness and abundance of my inner life in the external world? My instinct resonates with a yes so strong that my body feels tangibly energized and calm at the same time in some wonderful chemical release. I have no clue how to do this though, and this might be the real change underneath all the other recent changes in my life.
For sometime now, I've been musing about integrity. The aspects of honor, reliability and trustworthiness have been there naturally, but the primary emphasis has been on wholeness. My tangential mind leaps here to healing in that healing restores a person to wholeness. The last few years have left me feeling like I've just been soldiering on despite suppurating wounds, and I'm giving myself credit here for the courage I haven't recognized in myself before. I do know how to endure with a semblance of grace and even style. It's time for more than that though.
Tearing down the walls that make the different aspects of myself feel almost like enemies isn't going to be easy. I'm integrating the internal neighborhood. It will involve taking honesty with myself and respect for myself to a new level. It means bidding goodbye to the duality I somewhat enjoy, but I also know that it's what I need.
balance
integrity
posted by Cynthia at
6:22 AM
4 Comments:
"I'm integrating the internal neighborhood. It will involve taking honesty with myself and respect for myself to a new level. It means bidding goodbye to the duality..."
You.Go.Girl!
We are ALWAYS saying goodbye to one thing and hello to another. Sometimes it's sad, but it's rarely bad. It's part of life, and it's part of growth. I was SOOOO happy to see this entry!
Cynthia,
What an incredibly gifted person you are! Your many gifts and the generosity of your spirit scream out from this post without you even being aware of it. Your first paragraph is quite amazing in and of itself, and once again I recognize someone very much in possesion of the same conflicts that I also struggle with.
I do not know what transpired in the past years of your life that caused your wounds, but I know that I have only grown through suffering, which always resulted in deep introspection and personal growth.
I admit that I have found integration of my various parts sometimes painfully impossible to pull off- never feeling totally in charge of my life when I have tried to balance the logical parts with the creative parts, and the earthy parts with the spiritual parts.
I am still working on it. (Sigh)But integrating a neighborhood usually always requires adaptations of the various inhabitants- and if one or two inhabitants are unhappy they can always leave, because the patchwork quilt of diversity that will be created in the end will enrich the whole.
Good luck my friend. I am sure that your neighborhood is probably much more integrated at this point in time then you even realize.
"The last few years have left me feeling like I've just been soldiering on despite suppurating wounds..."
I suppose it could be said that I missed the entire point of this post, but the above line is the one in the entire essay to which I could best relate...
My reaction has been to allow one of the two warring sides of me to take dominance--the inward, "creative," get-along-just-fine-alone side. Let's just say it hasn't turned out to be the best choice.
I remember you writing about balance before, back on the AOL Journal. I thin one thing I may have said, or meant to say, was that balance is necessary; but there is also abandon, giving your all to something, going overboard if necessary. I believe sometimes we have to be Icarus and not fly the middle way. I struggle with this all the time. Love to you, Cynthia.
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