Remember that. Better yet, live that.
Everywhere you turn lately people are talking about finding balance in life. From religious sects, spiritual leaders and life coaches to blogs, books and even the movies. Elizabeth Gilbert’s New York Times Best Selling Book "Eat Pray Love" recently made the move from chick lit to chick flick, but her story isn’t new. Here is yet another tale of a woman wanting to flee from her life as she goes through a quarter-life crisis. During this mental and emotional meltdown, she divorces her husband and purchases countless self-help books. When those fail to fix what she deems broken, she decides to quit her job, sells everything she owns and runs away to unfamiliar worlds (Italy, India and Bali). In these foreign lands she will live for a year (4 months in each) with hopes she will "find herself." Sure, strong Miss Independent women are highly attractive to me and there is something inherently sexy about traveling abroad. However, as I sat in the theater with my sister (brother brownie points to me for taking her to a chick flick) and she marveled at the exquisite food, the plethora of accents and the breath taking scenery...all I marveled at was how unbelievably beautiful Julia Robert’s smile is! But my schoolboy crush on a Hollywood celebrity is not what this post is about. Nor is it a review of her latest movie. This post is about an "ah-ha moment" we can all discover for ourselves without needing to flee the country to discover it.
A lot of us are control freaks. We are reluctant to give up the reins to anyone or anything, including love. The second we start to sense we are losing grip on a situation, AKA falling in love, we feel the overwhelming urge to pull back instead of allowing ourselves to let it flow through us like rain. To some, falling hopelessly in love with another human being is incredibly frightening because they feel as if they are going to wash away. They fear becoming so submerged in this new person and new relationship that they will lose a sense of who they are and the life they set out to live. But for those that realize it’s sometimes necessary to be temporarily unbalanced in/by love in order to live a balanced life, their identity remains intact. They keep the same core values, goals and dreams. They remain a "me" first and a "we" second.
If you’ve ever been in love, you understand the roller coaster of emotions that comes with it. And when it comes to roller coasters there are 3 types of riders:
- Those too frightened to ever climb aboard for fear of being out of control.
- Those who climb aboard with hesitation and ride white knuckled, anxious for it to end so they can regain control.
- Those who jump right in, throw their hands in the air, relinquish all control and just enjoy the ride...to wherever it takes them and for however long it lasts.
A roller coaster, like love, can leave you feeling dizzy. But isn’t that dizzy state the best part of love? They are the first thought on your mind before you’re fully awake in the morning, the final thought on your mind before you fall asleep at night and a constant thought passing through your mind during the day. I’m fine with not being completely in control of my heart. I’m fine with the sick, queasy feeling I sometimes get in the pit of my stomach at noon because it’s balanced out by the warm, fluttering in my chest I receive at midnight by something as simple as a smiley face message on my phone. Our heart is the most vulnerable part of our body. So to give our heart to someone and relinquish that power is understandably scary, but it’s also empowering and freeing. It’s the same reason why people like music and dancing and drinking. They all temporarirly make you lose control, as does love.
To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.
So while we struggle to live this balanced life that we are constantly being preached to about, perhaps love is best left out of that balanced mix. Afterall, if the heart is the most vulnerable part of the body, then love surely is the strongest emotion the heart emits. And isn’t that balance in itself? Tying the weakest part of the body to the strongest emotion known to man?
Or maybe I’m just trying to start a campaign against conventional and predictable love. How unbelievably boring and unromantic would that relationship be!
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