Balance: A State of Equilibrium

Anna Ruth finds balance.

Balance noun

1. a state of equilibrium

Today, I am out of balance. There is a cacophony in and around me. A persistent feeling of unsteadiness follows me. When I usually write about balance, it’s in the context of infant motor development – but when I think about balance, the questions I hold - like “what are the inner and outer conditions required to find balance?” - have everything and nothing to do with infants. The content at the core of these inquiries far transcends what I usually write or say professionally.

In the unceasing ebb and flow, between the push and pull of life’s embrace, how do human beings discover steadiness? How do we find a state of equilibrium?

Today, I’m having a hard time maintaining my balance. But no one ever finds everlasting balance – we lose balance, find balance, lose it again. Balance is in motion. Balance is motion. The natural laws of the universe are the laws the govern all existence: we expand and contract. We calibrate and recalibrate moment to moment to moment.

Today, I’m finding balance. I am in constant motion. Stability requires micro-movements, finding and re-finding equal distribution of weight, so there is an ease - a quality of effortlessness.

A delicate pendulum swaying into steadiness.

Your hand opens and closes, and opens and closes.

If it were always a fist or always stretched open,

you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,

the two as beautifully balanced

and coordinated

as birds’ wings.

— Rumi