Balance

Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one’s balance and keep afloat.
~Eric Hoffer

For a brief period, I took flight training lessons. The first time I went up in a small plane with my instructor, I felt like a teenager learning to drive: I couldn’t pay attention to everything all at once and consequently over corrected (“swinging and flailing”) trying to keep the plane level. My flight instructor said that flying is actually quite easy once you’ve reached desired altitude: “you just need to make small corrections to keep a steady flight path.”

Mindfulness eventually evens out our flight path because we learn how to balance. We develop our internal gyroscope so that we see when we’re leaning, and we can make skillful corrections to return to equilibrium.

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm, and harmony.
~Thomas Merton