Balancing Act, 11

Balancing is not a cakewalk, but one has to in order to cope, survive, thrive, avoid unnecessary embarrassment...One title I was given in one of my workplaces was "The Great Balancer", and this was because I was balancing four different worksites and had actually done this rather well over a period of around twelve years or so. It hasn't always been easy, and I have often had to make compromises, even sacrifices in order to keep my respective bosses quiet. Sometimes enjoyable, because there is a certain adrenalin rush that comes with it, but it is also tiring. When I left one of my worksites last year I did feel the void at first, from having thrived on this ridiculous balancing act. Suddenly I was faced not with five days of work but only four, and the challenge of what to do with that Friday off to begin my habitual long weekend. Can a First World Problem get any sweeter? My first few Fridays off did feel a little bit awkward. Yes, I was reaping the modest blessing of early CPP, being just over sixty, but I felt at a sudden loss. I felt suddenly the horror, of the retired man who suddenly has nothing to do, even if I was experiencing this only one day a week, and I was visualizing some of the sad, lonely old men I see poking around the community, reading newspapers on park benches, watching construction sites as though they were football matches, and shuffling home to thee chronic loneliness and isolation of the unloved. The idea of living, or existing in that kind of vacuum for ten or twenty years before being carted off with dementia to the nursing home then quietly croaking while attended by professional strangers is not at all appealing, nor should it be. And it doesn't have to be inevitable. My free Fridays became a kind of a test run so I decided to use them as social days, and I began to try to fit in visits with friends whom I would otherwise only be able to see less frequently, and usually after work when we were all too tired to be clever or witty company. This seems to have become a victim of its own success and now, I am almost as busy with friends on Fridays (I do language exchange with Hispanics that day, as well, and I suppose they are also friends) as I am on a work day, but it's all found its balance. Saturday remains Nothing Day, a day of rest and creative anti-sociality. Sunday mornings are for church and the afternoons are flexible. I think that balancing our lives happens naturally and organically as we bring our inner lives into balance. I often think of the Fool as a juggler standing in the very heart of a chaotic universe, juggling and throwing his multitudinous multi-coloured balls, from a point of stillness and tranquility, thus maintaining the cosmos in order without dropping one single ball. And so I continue.