Finding Balance

Life is very, very complex.

It doesn’t have to be complicated

It’s quite a paradox that on the one hand we want to be alive and on the other hand we embrace all these complexities that make it appear that life is not worth living. Because of all the problems we have, all the suffering that we have, and all the different sets of circumstances that our lives go through, we sometimes wonder why it has to be this way.

For many of us, from the time we were very small children, it seems that we have been having some kind of a problem. Something isn’t going right and we struggle. We do the best that we can, and we go through all kinds of trials and tribulations. We go through loving others and others loving us. We go through hatred, ambition, fame, fear, lossall kinds of things.

We have friends in this life, people that we are very close to. Then something happens, and we don’t see these people any more. We have someone in our life, and we think that everything revolves around our relationship. Again something happens. The years pass and they become a vague memory. And sometimes, incredibly, we don’t even remember their names. But at the time they were in our lives, it was a matter of life and death. It was so, so important.

We can all go back in our personal history and see events that had us so anxious, so excited, and so much on edge about how things would turn out. Then time passes, and those events don’t seem to be so important. But at the time they were happening, they were very important!

Taking the attitude

that nothing matters about anything

is not very wisenor is it very kind.

Taking the attitude that nothing matters about anything means we pass our life ignoring life; and, therefore, we might as well not even be here.

Then again we can take things so seriously

that life is running us instead of us running our life.

There has to be a middle point someplace.

And that middle point can be determined only by us for us. Nobody else can tell us where that point is. Nobody has the right to tell us where that place is.

I notice the older I’m getting, I am starting to realize that life is very, very precious; and to take the gift of life for granted and not to live life is a big, big mistake.

Even though time does not exist (that’s another conversation), in this state that we are in now we are continually living in the past and the present and the future. We are continually living in those three places all the time. It is very difficult many times to recognize where we are.

There are many, many traditions that try to eliminate the past and/or try to eliminate the future. They want to deal with the present only. But the present is an instant. And the present is always made up of the past and the future.

We have many moments that we call now.

But all the now moments we have

are also made up

of the past and the future.

And we must balance these things.