On needing (and craving) balance

I’ll never forget the first time I saw the Pyramids of Giza. It was nearly 5 years ago and we were in a taxi, heading into our unknown life in Egypt with our 4 year old who hadn’t started school yet. After passing a huge IKEA sign just outside of the airport (the very first of many surprises), we were looking outside the windows at the dense urban landscape filled with mosques and churches and rows of similarly looking grey buildings of various stages of completion, and then all of the sudden, without warning or any particular fanfare, there they were- the Pyramids of Giza! It was so unexpected, seeing the last surviving wonder of the ancient world so close to the hustle and bustle of the capital city, and the whole scene of history and modernity just kind of took my breath away.

We would call Alexandria our home for nearly 5 years, and there are so many friends and scenes and moments etched into my mind and spirit from our time there. But today I’d like to share one particular sight that always made me smile, something I saw most often during the early morning hours on our visits to Cairo– men balancing long trays of freshly baked bread on the top of their heads while weaving in and out of traffic on a bicycle! I know this might seem rather mundane to Egyptians, but no matter how many times I saw this, I always felt joy spotting a bread-carrying bicyclist working their magic in the chaotic streets of Cairo. 

This scene (which at the very least illustrates some tremendous skills!) also captures beautifully the importance of balance. We all know that it takes balance to ride a bicycle but the importance of this balance is magnified when you add to it the fact that today’s income depends upon the safe delivery of the tray of bread atop your head.

Like I’m guessing many of you, I struggle a lot with balance and even more so these days with time on-screen vs off. I also seem to have a more difficult time with balancing everything during the last month of the year. In this season of giving and receiving– which is itself balance– I find myself struggling to find and keep a healthy balance in many things, including what I eat and what I do with my time. There are so many pressures to make the “most wonderful time of the year” wonderful that it can quickly turn into the opposite.

This is the season I find especially difficult to balance the big three: taking care of responsibilities, taking care of others and taking care of myself. Often what I do just doesn’t make much sense. For example, I want to get meaningful gifts for family and friends even though I know that just being there with them is all they really need. (Ok, I’m clearly talking about fellow adults here– most kids don’t buy at all Mariah Carey’s wish that all I want for Christmas is you~~~~~!) Seriously though, how many hours have we spent trying to find the “perfect” gift for someone when the receiver just wants our love, our time?

The struggle of expectations vs reality are always heightened around holidays. I’d like for my son to anticipate and enjoy Christmas in the ways I did as a kid, but gaps in time and geography make this challenging. And when you live overseas and your homes are in more than one country, you find yourself dealing with balance far too often, juggling which holidays you’ll spend where, and how you wish you could spend so much more time in each place. You crave more time. There just never seems to be enough time to balance the jet lag with the loving reunions with the reality of work and the fact that everyone else wants off for the holidays too.

So my dear family, friends and readers, what I want to wish most for you and I is a better sense of balance. The main reason most of our soon-to-be-made New Year’s resolutions will soon be broken is that most are probably not balanced. We expect sudden and miraculous changes in behavior when in reality it takes patience and step-by-step commitment. So in this season of giving and receiving, give yourself more credit, more patience, more time, and continue to be kind to yourself and others. Hopefully then you’ll receive more joy, more peace and a better sense of balance in return.

Now it’s time for me to put down the phone and grab a book instead. Aloha!