Finding the balance? Or going with the flow?

After starting my blogging experience with all the furvor of New Year new beginnings, I have slipped from my weekly posting schedule.  For the last 7 weeks I’ve been teaching a class at my psychoanalytic institute and have been immersed in the fabulous experience of intellectual stimulation.  Through preparing the course and participating in some high level discussions with the candidates in the class, I have felt a vitality that doesn’t get met in other capacities of my life.  (In a future post I wil say more about the topic itself — The Role of Bodily Experience in Psychoanalysis).

I have many roles I juggle and I love them all — mother, wife, psychotherapist/psychoanalyst, supervisor, teacher………and more.  And each of these roles has myriad activities I love to do.

Each of these things gives me great pleasure but at times they all come together in such a way that I have too much on my plate.  I am used to helping others navigate the “too muchness” of how our lives shape up these days.  And I have often talked about having “balance” in life — not letting one thing take up all the space. 

But how possible and realistic is “balance?”  Can all the important things have a place in our lives all the time?  Can we limit our passions to leave room for other passions?  Can we feel emotionally torn between our various roles?  

I have started to consider abandoning the ideal of “balance” for a more realistic “going with the flow” approach.  This requires trust in self and faith that we will be able to navigate life as it comes.  It requires an awareness of our selves and an attunement to our self experience to know how we’re doing and what we need.  It requires an ability to say “no” to some things or changing course from time to time.   It also requires a good sense of what fulfillment means to each of us rather than a catch all goal of happiness.  (Another future post will be abandoning the ideal of “happiness.”) 

How do your passions stack up in your life?  Are you feeling pulled in too many directions?  Have you lost yourself in all the “doings?”  Imagine going with the flow and trusting yourself to know what you need as you move along your life journey.

So, I will post to my blog when I feel enough space for the writing to emerge.  It may be weekly or totally sporadic.  But, for sure it will feel more authentic to me.