Balance, Daniel-san

One of my favorite dumb movies is "The Karate Kid." There are a billion things wrong with that movie; it is hackneyed, racist, full of broad, stereotypical characters and a story you can see coming a mile away, but I run into it on Saturday afternoon television every so often and invariably I will watch it to the end. I love Mr. Miagi's lessons--my son Roger is Japanese-American and the pidgin accent is ridiculous and insulting but there's an irresistible tough/tender quality in his homilies for his lonely, bullied pupil. If you let yourself just be a child watching that movie you can't help but be drawn in by the teachings about work and discipline and practice, "paint the fence" and "wax on, wax off" and "sand the floor." But I still can't believe Crane Style really worked. My favorite lesson is the one about "balance," chiefly because I think we all struggle so much to maintain balance in our lives, between exercise and chores, work and family, responsibility and recreation, our own needs and the needs of others. Tonight Dahlia wanted me to play with her. I told her I was too busy. I was, but what a stupid choice, one that utterly screams out for a bop on the head from a sensei. There is never a Mr. Miagi around when you need a quick push into the water.

I struggle constantly for balance, and invariably I'm going overboard in one direction or another. When I started the blog I was staying up till three every night to write, going around exhilarated with the new project but cranky and sleep deprived. For a good stretch of weeks I was working out 5-6 times a week and starting to feel really energized and in shape, but my laundry was stacking up and I wasn't spending enough time with friends and family. The last week or so I've worked out just a couple of times, spending far too many hours playing low stakes Internet poker. I made a $140 over a few evenings of playing $2-per-tournament poker, which is fun, but it's a question of priorities; it's a question of balance.

There are all kinds of areas that demand a balance equation. Money and time. Freedom and duty. Independence and responsibility. Resources and wants. I admire people like William, who seem to have a strong inner compass that invariably points in the direction of God's will, or people like my wife, who just has a fierce inner drive to get things done and put chores and responsibility first.
I have often been a creature of obsessions, passions and drives, and balance has never come easy.

There's even a flip side to balance, I think. Sometimes we have to be willing to be a little unbalanced, to be extreme in our dedications, single-minded in our aims. Flipping those switches at the right time is the true art of living. It takes a strong inner voice, which, when we're in tune with it, sounds a lot like our mother.

My goal for this weekend is to create some balance. Tonight I got the laundry done and a light-hearted blog entry. Tomorrow I'll get a good cleansing workout and a full night's sleep. Monday night when the money arrives I'll catch up on my bills and set a budget for the rest. I spoke to Rick again this afternoon and I should know about the room in a day or two. I really have a good feeling about that--the location is wonderful and in our conversations he seems like a really solid and interesting and enjoyable guy. I mean this sincerely: whatever God wills.

Saturday, I ought to play a couple of games of Old Maid and take Tia and Dahlia to lunch.