Tightrope Act or Balanced Walk?

Ever feel as if you are walking across a tightrope or on an extremely narrow ridge as you traverse your life?

Do the conflicting challenges and warring obligations sometime seem overwhelming, threatening to throw you completely off balance?

Can you see yourself rolling down the steep embankments to your left and right?

I suppose this is the nature of life for a growing number of us as we rush and struggle our way through day after day.

That is one way to view the image here--a tightrope balancing act.

But, take another look. Can you see something else here?

If you lift your eyes from the very narrow ridgeline to the figure's feet, legs, arms and hands, the image changes, doesn't it? What we are seeing here is balance at its best.

I guess it all depends on how you look at the challenges and the difficulties, what do you think?

When I speak of balance, I am not talking about a comfortable walk down the middle of the road. No, not that. The edge, the sometimes radical edge is still very present. But the balance comes with focus, selflessness and simply allowing oneself to be lost in the walk itself--a walk complete with beauty and conflict, peace and turmoil, growth and decline.

Maybe the secret is to keep our eyes trained on the light just ahead of us.

[Heron Dance provided the watercolor image.]