Life: achieving balance or, is it a bridge over troubled waters? Perhaps it’s both.

“When you’re weary / Feeling small / When tears are in your eyes / I’ll dry them all / I’m on your side / Oh, when times get rough / And friends just can’t be found… —Simon & Garfunkel

“The whole world is a narrow bridge and the essential thing is not to be afraid.” —Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

If a person spends their life on a narrow bridge, leading to nowhere, it appears that there is no better thing for them to do than to maintain balance and forever live in fear of falling down to the abyss of anxiety. The narrow bridge is full of dangers in front of us that we must cross. The truth is, we have climbed a long way up and fear can freeze us in our tracks. Is this truly the best we can hope for? 

Is there no way to transcend this precarious human condition?  

Spending the better half of my life trying to figure that out, I am still asking questions. And, I am coming to the realization that life is a balancing act. The difference between health and happiness, sorrow and death, is a relatively simple idea to understand, and simple does not mean easy. Khalil Gibran wrote, “your joy is your sorrow unmasked.” I have written previously about this idea that life’s deepest joy often follows in the wake of loss or grief. Even today, the media provides easy access to stories of those who, having survived loss, grief and devastation, find themselves thriving. Does it need to be some kind of devastating loss?

Not necessarily devastating and still, finding peace and maintaining balance requires focus and the ability to adjust. Neither of which are my strong suits. A wise man told me “whether we are aware or not, we walk the line every day. Life hangs on our next breath, the next heartbeat, a narrow temperature range, and a small set of conditions on Planet Earth that make human existence possible.”

Some might find dwelling on mortality macabre, and it does help refine what is important, what is wanted, needed, and what needs to be let go. Difficult or not, I am fully aware that at any moment, life can end. We can slip off the “narrow bridge” that the Rebbe refers to and plunge into eternity in a single misstep, and he says that we cannot afford to live our lives in fear of that fall. It is going to inevitably come for all of us. Realizing this, the question is: “How will I live right NOW, in whatever time I am given?”  A fan favorite in my Intercultural Communication class is Tiffany Shlain’s short, 11 minute film, “30,000 Days.” The film asks that question. 

How are you going to spend your 30,000 days? That is, if we are fortunate enough to live to be 82 years old. And, according to that math, I recently surpassed day 21,535. I am certainly hoping for more, and the count is still the count. 

Shlain says humans have been wrestling with questions about how to live a good purposeful life, one that contributes to something larger than themselves, throughout all of history, and across all cultures.  Every era has faced these questions in different ways depending on what was happening in the world —what the world was asking of them, and in today's world, we certainly have a lot of things we need to address.

Will I live in terror at the prospect of future pain, suffering or death? Will I prepare for the inevitabilities of life, or simply arrive at my destination when I get there? Or, will I grasp my “now”, and stride over the bridge of my life, over the gulf of fear, toward my best and highest vision and purpose? My wise friend says “it is a choice we make every minute, every day.”

By the way, the role of the Rebbe is to enable us to achieve our purpose, but not to do the work for us. and, the purpose of fear is awareness. Fear opens our eyes, urges us to listen, and readies our muscles for movement. We can learn to view awareness as our friend, unconsciousness our enemy. One way to do this, begin to embrace that awareness as awe, not fear, and boldly walk on the bridge over the span of our lives. Eternity awaits us all. Turn shock into awe.

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Simon & Garfunkel were an American folk rock duo consisting of singer-songwriter Paul Simon and singer Art Garfunkel. They were one of the best-selling music groups of the 1960s, and their biggest hits—including “The Sound of Silence” (1965), “Mrs. Robinson” (1968), “The Boxer” (1969), and “Bridge over Troubled Water” (1970)—reached number one on singles charts worldwide

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, also known as Reb Nachman of Bratslav, (April 4, 1772 – October 16, 1810), was the founder of the BreslovHasidic movement. Rebbe Nachman, a great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, breathed new life into the Hasidic movement by combining the esoteric (obscure and only understood or intended to be understood by a small number of people with special knowledge) —secrets of Judaism (the Kabbalah) with in-depth Torah scholarship. He attracted thousands of followers during his lifetime and his influence continues until today through many Hasidic movements such as Breslov Hasidism. Rebbe Nachman’s religious philosophy revolved around closeness to God and speaking to God in normal conversation “as you would with a best friend.”