Are You in or out of Balance?

We all have felt out of balance at times, which is a feeling of being unsettled or falling off a tightrope.  If it is uncomfortable enough for us, we may feel it is time to do something about it. But, what is it that causes this unbalanced feeling or way of life?  Balance is having the right amount of something, not too much, or too little.  It is for the most part doing things in moderation. Moderation being the mid-point of the better between extremes, and is what we should strive for. It is aligning a part(s) of our lifestyle with another.  Sometimes we totally lean toward one way, perhaps an obsession, and other times we are torn and pulled two ways.  Balance is when we meet demands in the middle.  Being in balance could be likened to a teeter totter.  If there is something taking up a lot of our time and we don't have time for anything else, we may be out of balance.  Highly productive people have a great sense of balance and harmony realizing they need to renew and regenerate in quiet and stillness before going back to their projects.  It is important to step back and take breaks in order to clear our minds and be able to avoid being consumed and obsessed by anything we can't walk away from.  This way, we get a different perspective, and whatever we are working on seems to fall  into place.  A doctor friend of mine said to me, "remember in elementary school where we had different subjects, and in between were lunch and recess?"    Balance in our feelings can be achieved by letting go of emotional ups and downs and entering into more internal emotional peace, harmony, and evenness.  Being in balance can also mean being centered on the premise that we receive in life what we are aligned with, what we think about.  Henri Matisse, a famous French artist, wrote, " What I dream of is an art of balance of purity and serenity, and void of troubling or depressing subject matter," and "Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony," was written by Thomas Merton, Anglo-American Catholic writer, poet, and mystic, and Trappist monk.