Balance

A Diana Walles picture

Many people around me, and including me, are stressed and exhausted. We seem to be constantly running in order to stand still. It is not that anyone is shirking their job, there are just not enough hours in the day to do everything. For those of us who are creative practitioners this is a problem. In order to be creative we need a moment to stand still and breathe. In this beautiful picture by Diana Walles, she quotes Rumi: 'Let the water settle; you will see the moon and stars mirrored in your being.' This couldn't be more applicable.

I am a writer and I require balance. I need to find time to write otherwise I feel totally discombobulated. Disconnected from the person I really am. I am sure I am not the only one. Whether you work in academia or the NHS, or many of the other organisations being throttled by the current government, you are constantly fire-fighting leaving little time to stand still let alone notice the world around you.

I am sure this cannot be healthy for anyone, particularly those of us who, as previously mentioned, are creative practitioners. This is because there is the added pressure that as such we need to produce 'outputs' that justify our existence within academia. Where are these ivory towers where it is assumed we will go and be prolific?

I was sent this poem recently with the idea that perhaps it makes a gesture towards some answers as to why we are all so tired and over-wrought:

My life is not this steeply sloping hour (Rainer Maria Rilke)

My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree;
I am only one of my many mouths,
and at that, the one that will be still the soonest.

I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death’s note wants to climb over—
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
                    And the song goes on, beautiful.


I think maybe it does. I need to find this life that is not this steeply sloping hour so I can allow the song to go on and be beautiful. So to all my stressed friends, I hope you find that moment to standstill, breathe and remember why you love doing what you do.


For some fun listen to Moxy Fruvous singing My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors. Thank you Judith Ridge, who works for the Western Sydney Young People's Literature Project, for posting this on Facebook.