It’s probably one thing I’ve never fully achieved. I came to the conclusion a short while soon after I was born that I’m not the Happy Medium kind; I’m either madly in love or sharpening my pitchforks for the parade. I didn’t tell this to anyone, of course; no one would believe me. But my mom probably figured it out when I decided to, for once and for all, expel the onion plant from my life now and forever. At age 2.
Lately (because I’ve been taking a human health class at UCLA) I got to thinking about balance again. Probably it stemmed from some ill-borne discussion on homeostasis. If our physical bodies are constantly readjusting themselves to optimal balance (with every motion making sure what goes in comes out and what doesn’t come out gets tinsel-wrapped in fat), then aren’t our emotional selves in the same way adjusting our outlooks on life to the actual life we’re living? Is the balance of our psychology keeping us in check from going haywire, doing crazy things?
Well I still went crazy sometimes. I am oversimplifying this a lot but maybe it’s sort of like when the body is so unhealthy that “homeostasis” isn’t even effective. I actually was depressed for over half a year some time ago and I couldn’t even function normally. I wonder if my brain, its subconscious, was somehow struggling to pull me back up? One’s muscular organs would certainly try to stay alive to the last, even in a person nearing death. But did the mind know that the horrors it underwent were “horrors”? Or was the depression formed as a seed in the mind itself, so that the mind heralded its onslaught on the rest of me?
I don’t even know what I’m rambling about anymore. I went jogging again this morning, but because I’d pulled an all-nighter just today I cramped pretty soon. But I did catch dawn, and for once my eyes weren’t too sleepy to open up and see them. I saw an old man doing tai chi, turned away from the track and facing the soccer field covered in sprinklers. I also saw: the school’s repairmen, people who wear weight belts to unload the beverages into the vending machines, athletes much fitter than me looking at me strangely because I wasn’t an athlete, and finally an older woman jogger who was passing me. Because I figured we were at least sharing the same activity I gave her a good morning smile but I think she had a muscular twitch in her jaw because her mouth didn’t really move in reply. I’m sure she also intended to say hello, but unfortunately this facial disfigurement impaired her abilities to speak.
By the way, the graphic at the beginning of the post is from squirrelldesigns. I don’t know them or anything, but it was a prominent result from the Google Image search for “balance.” And now I’m going to catch some shut-eye. Ahh, I’m tired. While the rest of the world awakes.
