I have been feeling out of whack recently, unsettled and unbalanced. I mean this literally as well as figuratively. On the one hand, I find myself faltering going down stairs, so I need to stop and reset myself before continuing. On the other hand, I also sense a lack of cohesion among the various roles I play every day. I need a reset there, too, it seems.
My university's daily news has run a story about pandemic fatigue twice in the last two days, and while I can easily agree that I am feeling these effects, I strongly disagree with the suggested response:
"Virginia Tech has had many successes in the fight against coronavirus, but to continue, an inward battle must also be fought."
The military metaphor here is wrong-headed and dangerous. I refuse to be at war with myself. I have had quite enough of that over the years. It brought me nothing but continuous heartache and grief.
Instead, this morning I hung up a set of Tibetan prayer flags over my desk in my studio downstairs, and doing so definitely increases the sense that it is a sacred space, *my* sacred space (see my last blog post on 11 October). According to Wikipedia --
Traditionally, prayer flags come in sets of five: one in each of the five colors that correspond with the 5 Elements of Chinese theory. The five colors are arranged from left to right in a specific order: blue, white, red, green, and yellow. The five colors represent the five elements and the Five Pure Lights. Different elements are associated with different colors for specific traditions, purposes and sadhana. Blue symbolizes the sky and space, white symbolizes the air and wind, red symbolizes fire, green symbolizes water, and yellow symbolizes earth. According to Traditional Tibetan medicine, health and harmony are produced through the balance of the five elements.
While I love the visual reminder I get to engage with my spirituality, to think about balance every time I pull my head up from the computer screen long enough to look around, the idea of balancing five different elements seems very tricky to me.
To be clear, I have trouble with whole idea of balance, which my good friend Natalie once wrote about in her "GraceNotes" column in The Denver Post:
Unicycling and the Art of Balance
By Natalie Costanza-Chavez and Special to the Denver Post
January 14, 2008
For my birthday, my son gave me a quirky, tiny frame to wear on a string around my neck. He told me to put any image I wanted in it. Before he’d finished his sentence, I knew the picture I’d use.
A drawing of a unicycle hangs above my desk. I took it down, shrunk it to shy of 1 inch by 1 inch, cut it out, maneuvered it into the frame and voilà! a necklace.
I wore it for days before my husband said, “What’s that?” I answered, “A unicycle. You know, Paul’s unicycle thing.”
I said it with a jog-your-memory finality. Paul Heilker, by the way, is my good friend, a writer who teaches at Virginia Tech, and my husband knows this but still followed up with “Huh?”I spoke slower, with slight warning, “You know, Paul’s unicycle thing,” as if repetition would help him find his way.
The pin-drop arid air of a husband trying to change the topic by sheer wish-power alone caused me to turn and look him in the eye. He said, “This is a test, isn’t it? I’m failing, aren’t I?”
“You don’t remember Paul’s unicycle thing?” I asked. “Why do you think I have a unicycle hanging above my desk?”
“You have a unicycle hanging above your desk?” After he said it, he began breathing in that shallow I should- have-kept-my-mouth-shut way.
I left him standing in the hall and proceeded to my office to e-mail Paul and ask if I could steal his unicycle thing for a column.
He graciously said yes, and then gave credit for the theory behind his unicycle image to Peter Elbow, an English professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts. Ever the academician, Paul attached professor Elbow’s article about how writing teachers have to play two contradictory roles at the same time: cheerleader and critic.
Elbow believes the way to do this well is to give 100 percent to the role of cheerleader, and then turn and give 100 percent to the role of critic. Paul was thinking about this when his image was born.
His e-mail explains, “I was asking God for balance, but I had a particular notion of balance in my mind: the scales. If I could only figure out the exact, precise, correct number of grams to put on both sides of the scale — work vs. family, research vs. teaching, physical health vs. spiritual health, taking care of myself vs. taking care of others — then I would achieve the balance I so desperately sought. But I was always frustrated. I never got the darn scales to balance. Or if I did, even for a moment, the slightest change, the smallest extra weight on either side, would cause the whole thing to come crashing down.
“I realized, eventually, that this kind of balance is static: It doesn’t move, doesn’t change, can’t adapt, and thus is really fragile,” he wrote.
Here comes his unicycle thing. Wait for it:
“Unicycle riders have tremendous balance, but it’s a balance that’s always in motion, always cycling from one extreme to another. When they are ‘standing still,’ they are rocking forward, then backward, then forward, cycling between extremes, always moving, always changing, always adapting. It’s a far better image than scales because it shows how balance is dynamic, not static. I learned I have to be 100 percent loyal to work and extreme in my commitment to it; then I can turn around and be 100 percent loyal to my family, completely dedicated to it, not distracted and not worried about work in the slightest. I push the cycle all the way forward precisely so that I can push it all the way backward.”
Here’s his clincher:
“Multitasking is a lie. If you do more than one thing at a time, you do damage to each of them and fracture yourself in the process. Only by being completely dedicated to the thing in front of you can you do honor and justice to all the things you need to do, and all the people you need to be in the course of a day.”
Paul’s unicycle thing.
As for my husband? I may get him a unicycle to hang above his desk. Until then, he has this column — and my necklace — to remind him.
Perhaps I need a unicycle on my studio wall, too, or at least a photo of one, right below the prayer flags.