BALANCE

endless thoughts about you. Your lovers chase you like a light at the end of the tunnel, always wanting more, searching for the happiness and prosperity you promise. Your critics eye you with disdain — and whenever you reach out, they sprint in the opposite direction without so much as a backward glance. You evoke passion in all of these people — passion that underscores minds. Everyone moves towards or away from you without stopping to catch their breath. But you’re pervasive, and you demand to be known. Whether I move towards or away from you, your wrath is certain. Too much of you and you’re all-consuming. You let me use you as a form of escapism from the problems you cause. You’re an instrument wielded by Capitalism to keep America’s servants in line, and I wholeheartedly resent you for it. I gave you my blood, sweat, and tears — screaming and suffering because I’d rather end my life than live it for your sake. Days spent poring over the worst of you, head spinning as I ran from class, to practice, to rehearsal, to home, to class again, then finally to burnout-induced hospitalization. Yet, still, I ran towards you, because I didn’t know any other way of being. With too little of you, I’m left purposeless, an endless, inauthentic, capitalist trap without much meaning at all. In your absence, I lose the ability to create, to imagine, to rally, to be.

I have a life’s worth of whiplash from venturing from one extreme, to the other, and back again — and I am only left miserable, wondering if it’s possible to be content with you. To stop the running in either direction, and simply be still.

But life (and for me, God) has a way of teaching hard lessons, of using oscillation to beg me to reexamine my way of life. In my life, I’ve chased you and run from you more times than I care to remember, growing weaker every time I retraced my steps. I let you, Work, lead me into a life I knew I couldn’t keep on living – but I had to learn that I could have you, and live too. Work, you taught me that you are a tool of Capitalism, but an entity in your own right. You were here before that dysfunctional system existed, and you will be here long after it dies. And to know you, Work, I had to leave behind the blind adoration and raging rejection I’d directed towards you for as long as I can remember. Because you’ve always shown me hints of the thriving relationship we can have — one that has me stake claim to the land between too little and too much of you. Living in that inbetween means doing what I love: laboring over the logistics of gettogethers with my friends, serving as a role model to my sisters deep into young adulthood, and consulting progressive organizations who are doing their part to change the world. And loving the moments of rest – to not be doing those things –just as much.

You’ve challenged me to make not only a mindset shift, but to actively apply the principle of stillness in work to my daily life. Even in the midst of the chaos, we can be still. We can reject the dominant culture’s obsession with you while understanding you, relishing equally in our time away. It is when more of us do this, being still, that the conversation around you begins to change. Together, we can reach not an obsession with running towards you, or away from you, but we can learn to stand still and accept you as a fantastic facet of this beautiful life.