life.

"Don't settle" They flippantly chide as you enter the years when restlessness begins to take hold like northern winds sweeping across the plains… frigid, and biting, cutting deep beneath the best wool money can buy. Stealing the breath from your lungs. Leaving you as empty as those fields in January. Remain kinetic, fluid, shifting, explosive. Do all of these things. Be all of these things. Without becoming tense and troubled, anxious and unstable. It is no wonder when middle age hits, we are more confused than our now pubescent teens wondering through the hallowed halls of high school for the very first time. "Don't settle" It echoes in my ears like distant church bells, becoming so mundane that every hour, on the hour, you hardly notice the ringing in your head. Finding the delicate balance between resolved and restless becomes a dance that we must learn the steps to, alone. The only toes to step on are our own. I wish, then, that someone had told me, "Find balance" That all pleasure is equalized with pain. That the pendulum swings… but somewhere in the middle is steady ground. And it has nothing to do, in fact, with being settled. That without the constant, unending, teeter-totter, there is no abiding. no solid, enduring latitude with which to set your compass. Perhaps then, it takes welcoming the settled. The calm, contentment, in order to live in the unsettled world of complex, and restive. The symmetry is not lost on me. "Don't settle" I won't and I will. Equally and the same, with arms stretched wide, nose to the heavens, heel to toe, on the tightrope that is my fragile balance.