Well, here I am, back from that far far away place known as life. That place of balance where everything in our lives is comfortable, happy & even. Isn’t that about right? Read on and experience my attempt at weaving together life, balance and design.
At a certain point in our transition into adulthood, I think we see our lives splayed out in front of us rather than the narrow tunnel-like view of how we see things from the place of young adulthood. We think about the ‘later’ s and ‘what if’s and ‘sometime when’s. Basically we are thinking about the bigger picture. This is all good and hopefully age & time appropriate, but not not always.
I think at this place in our adulthood, like some of the other [growing] experiences in our lives is supposed to be like being on an escalator, the kind of escalator that you find in airports that move you, not up a hill or up a floor, but a longer distance, one that is maybe more than the average comfort zone can manage. Some of these experiential times in my life feel like that same flat escalator going through a state, (like Wyoming) as opposed to going from gate 1 to gate 10. The splayed out thing landed in my life and lingered (still) to the point of exhaustion and frustration. Continually warranting serious analyzing and adjusting in order to find my way in a more timely fashion. Analyzing I do, adjusting, not so much. But I won’t digress.
In case I need to be more specific, the splayed out, bigger picture that I am referring to here is all the elements of our lives that have accumulated since young adulthood; family, work, friends, the ‘what I need to do for myself’, food/eating well, money, cost of living. We look forward and see all of these elements, the measure of them, possibly exploring new, stumbling a bit, and then standing back up only to have it all splayed out in front of us. Are you seeing what I am seeing yet?
As we move through this state of splayed out, not the tunnel which is quick, we figure out the balance of all of this. Or at least we are intending to find the balance; everything moving at the same pace, moderation, ups and downs, all in a fluid sort of way. We think we are doing well.
And then all of the sudden, we realize that we haven’t seen our closest friends in a couple of weeks or been attending to our most personal needs, or perhaps we have been eating really bad food night after night, feeling the sluggish couch potato thing.
Regardless of what it is that we all of the sudden realize, it is hindering our balance, we become out of wack.
In the moment when I start to feel the hinky overwhelming feelings, I try to simply observe. I can’t actually see the out of balance-ness through the overwhelming feelings. Balance or lack there of never seems to be the obvious culprit. A million other feelings rush through my head lining up to be the reason (s) for these overwhelming feelings, but never imbalance. When the light bulb finally does appear, flickering, or more like blindingly bright, I see it. And I ask myself why in the world I did not see all this earlier. Because I have been eating bags of sour candy night after night, I haven’t talked to my mother in more than 4 days, (or) I haven’t been outside for a walk to clear my head in at least a week. But no, none of those in my face every day activities pop into my head as the cause for my imbalance.
Just like when I do finally see that my life is a little (or a lot) out of balance, and I see that I need to adjust some things and how to adjust these things,the same reasoning fits when looking around your home. In a room, an specific area in your home, a collection of precious treasures gathered in one place, or a shelf with memories, take a step back, out of the tunnel like view, into the bigger picture escalator and see if anything can be adjusted. You may not see anything right away. You may run through your mind all the rules of design, that you followed to get the look you are seeing now. You may not know how you arrived at this place of visual imbalance. But if you push past what you think you know is the absolute, into the uncomfortable, create the hinky visual to help you see clear the a more balanced beauty and comfort in your home.
I am thinking I may have to come back to this blog at some point. But please let me know if you had any thoughts about it. I just switched to wordpress so if you see any errors or you can’t see the place to leave comments, forgive me and I will figure it out soon enough.
ciao
