BALANCE | SELF-ACCEPTANCE

I’m Not Super. Just Human

On redefining balance where none appears to exist

Balance is a fine thing.

That is, if you can instil any of it into your life.

Personally, I can’t remember the last time I felt like my life was balanced. But if I’ve mastered anything in the last few years, it’s staying on my feet while standing upon a metaphorical seesaw that constantly tilts one way and then the other and then back again.

One week, I will see time stretched out before me like an open book, my creativity free to go as wild as it likes, only to find that things come up, throwing everything out of balance once again, and the covers of that book come closing in.

The following week, it’s like the world has squeezed me into a corner and I find myself tossing up my options — grab a moment to write or make the house presentable? Have a bath and an early night with an enthralling novel or get started on the tax return?

I’m great at knocking out those things that have to be done. The Reminders app on my phone is my best friend in that department, and never lets me forget when a bill needs paying, a subscription needs cancelling, or a train journey needs booking. But sometimes they come all at once and I find myself skipping from one thing to another and then back again.

Just while writing these opening paragraphs, I have checked my unread WhatsApp messages, searched up the local arts centre website to see what my friend is suggesting we go to tomorrow, sent that message to my sister that I didn’t send earlier because my hands were too cold, and messaged my client to ask her where on earth she is. Because, you know, I’m writing this in the little cracks of time, such as while waiting for someone to show up on Zoom.

Amazing what you can do in the space of 20 minutes! And yet, I feel like a helicopter in a cyclone that desperately needs to land.

BUT…I have exactly two hours now until I have to leave to walk the dog and collect my son from school…and I don’t want to stop! Because once he’s home, dinner needs cooking, and Friday evening begins, that the end of any window of creativity until Monday morning. And then the helicopter’s propellors will start up again and the wind will rise once more.

So how do I find that strange ability to balance upon the ever-swaying tilt of the seesaw? The answer — by giving myself grace to be human.

Yes, you read that right — to be human, a failure at perfection, a victim of time. Not super, just human.

Finally, I have learnt a lesson worth learning and retaining for as long as I possibly can. And here are a couple of examples of how that plays out in my life…

The magic of perceived decluttering

One of my greatest failures as a human being is my messiness. Stuff is my nemesis. I hate clutter because my brain isn’t wired to be organised. Even when I find the perfect places to file stuff away, I always forget where those perfect places are.

Learning to accept — even embrace — the fact that I am merely a human complete with all of my flaws has gradually helped to diminish the frustration I have with stuff and the shame I feel from failing in this area.

In the last three weeks, an electric heater died and needed replacing, and our TV set gave up the ghost. The sad, dead devices have both gone into ‘the mortuary of things’ — the place in my house reserved for those things that need to go but haven’t yet been given the required transportation.

They have joined quite a few other things, such as my old, broken bed which is in pieces, and a few bags of old, unwanted clothes removed from shelves and drawers to make more space.

You see, I’m good at shifting things out of the way, but finding the time and the energy to put it all in the car and take it to the dump is another matter.

So, instead, I create an illusion of a decluttered space in which piles merely exist as part of an ever-changing landscape.

Stuff can be stressful. Useless clutter can add to the feeling of being scattered. But if I ever find myself leaning towards those feelings, I quickly replace them with the reminder that I am that — not super, just human.

And all is well again in my beautiful, light and spacious home with a few excess-to-requirements piles of things here and there.

The ever-emptying purse

Money is another thing I find almost impossible to keep in balance.

No matter much I try to budget for the month, it’s always off by a few hundred quid. Yep, not just £50 or £100, but at least £200–300. And that’s not me indulging in some retail therapy or having a mega night out. Those are few and far between for me, for I am pretty good at being thrifty.

And yet money seems to flow out as if my bank account is a broken faucet. I can’t seem to account effectively for the regular expenses in life, the large winter appetites of my kids, or the amount of fuel I will need to put in the car. Not to mention the emergency dentist visits or the unpredicted car repairs that take an extra unprecedented chunk out of the month’s reserves.

Yet this strange thing happens when I stop beating myself up for not quite managing the household budget as well as I need to and give myself the grace of being merely human. That strange phenomenon is that things work out, every single time.

It’s as if the universe is coming to tell me that, despite my inability to calculate what should be predictable, there will always be something unpredictable that shows up anyway. As long as I remember to embrace the fact that I am not super, just human.

Not predictable, just raw, real, and downright mysterious

If I can sum up our humanity in a few words, it’s that we cannot be measured and calculated, and neither can our lives.

We are not merely finite bodies, but balls of energy that are constantly changing and morphing while interacting with the particles of energy that surround us — none of which we can ever really predict.

The idea of balance, to me, implies being able to predict the energy of tomorrow with some accuracy. But my own life has proven to me that nothing is predictable. Everything is changing. All. The. Time.

For some more than for others, perhaps. But if we aren’t kept on our toes by constant change we end up more likely to be thrown off-balance when the unpredictable does occur.

So despite feeling as if balance is not something that occurs in my life in any measurable quantity, what I do know is that I am mastering the ability to hold my own, even as the seesaw tilts this way and then that.

I am grateful for it all

As I find myself beginning a new year in which the unpredictability of life has already shown up a-plenty within the first couple of weeks, I am bracing myself for my best year yet.

I don’t expect the seesaw to stop its ever-changing tilt any time soon. Instead, I am refining my inner strength as I stand upon one leg, arms in the air, like in the tree pose or the dancer pose in yoga.

And with that, sometimes I will feel as if I am lifting off the ground, sometimes soaring, and at others I will fall flat. In which case, I will rest awhile, as my body needs.

I will be as grateful for the moments of flight as I am for the moments of failure, because neither would be possible without the other. Balance, you see.

Because I’m not super, just human.

This was written in response to Liberty Forrest, Author’s invitation to share how we find, or fail to find, balance in our lives.

While you’re here, I highly recommend this great reminder about finding balance with your writing by Carrie Kolar:

And this amusing account of an abused lipstick with an unexpected twist at the end (pun intended) by Grace Delphia: