On Balance

I wrote the other day that what I missed about youth was the energy, and the ability to focus. I do miss those things, but even more I miss the excitement of being alive.

I enjoy the comfort of accepting who I am. I revel in the peace of quiet pursuits in an environment I love. I love being retired, with no external demands on my time. I like not having to accommodate anyone but the dogs I gather around me. I even find myself delighting in knowing the easiest way to do most tasks so that life seems easier now.

BUT ... my father was right ... everything is 50% good and 50% bad ...

The stresses of life have all but disappeared, and in their place is a warm bath of contentment. I need stress in my life if I am not to drowse off in the bath.

Maybe that is why I take in dogs. Maybe that is why I chose to build this house in this difficult location. Maybe that is why I have traveled in tough places. Maybe that is why, at 63, I spent three days in Uganda learning to whitewater kayak. Maybe I have kept myself slightly off balance all my life in order to hold onto the excitement of being alive.

One part of me seeks the balance and serenity; the other misses the sensation of being fully alive that I derive from unknowable places, new loves, prickly fears. The trick, I suspect, is to create the tightrope between safety and risk.

Way, WAY back when I was in Teachers' College, in 1960, I was taught History and Philosophy of Education by Paul Nash. He made us examine for the entire year the balance between freedom and authority in education. Now I am examining the tension and balance between a version of these two in my life.

Several years later I took a literature course from another excellent teacher, Robin Mathews. He did not lecture on a book until we had read it on our own, decided what was the most important idea, and handed in our essays. He made us take risks and responsibility for our ideas. He didn't want us to be safe; he wanted us to think.

Both men influenced how I taught my own students. Now I discover, these men are teaching me how to approach life as I age. Once the constraints of a job and the safety net of doing what is expected of us have dissolved, we have to re-invent ourselves. We have to discover a new balance between freedom and authority; between the comfort of safety and the excitement of risk-taking.