balance.

I was a part of this team building exercise once where a group of us, perhaps 6-8 or so had to stand up on this platform about 4 ft off the ground. The platform moved from side to side and back and forth, setting only on a single support at the very center. The object of the exercise was to move everyone to different parts of the platform in order for it to balance evenly and stay steady. It seemed easy enough, but of course it wasn’t long before the person moderating the exercise threw in a twist. Everyone had to close their eyes except for one person, who couldn’t move from the center.
It didn’t take us too long to figure it out, but it was challenging enough trying to call people to move in different directions, knowing that somewhat their safety was on the line (who wants to fall from a 4 ft high platform?) and also trying to communicate effectively throughout the exercise.
I had the unfortunate task for part of this project, of being the person “glued” to the center of the platform. Calling out names of friends I had just met, hoping they were right, asking them to move sheer inches right or left, forward or back wary ever so about them being misdirected and falling completely, or moving them in the wrong direction and the platform unexpectedly dropping at one end or another.
There were obvious reasons why this was one of the exercises we had to go through during this particular training, but recently this moment came to mind as I’ve been spending some serious time trying to bring some balance to my life. My heart has been so torn the past couple months between different friends, friend groups, church, work, family, other random things….mental health time. And for me it’s not necessarily making the decision to do whatever is going on, but it’s while taking part in that not yearning to be somewhere else, with other people. Truly being where I am mentally and physically.
I’ve been working on it, and it’s been going fairly well. It’s a work in progress. Regardless as I think back on this team building exercise I can visibly see the importance of everyone’s place in my “platform life” and how important it is to keep them in balance, or else other friends or facets to life will suddenly fall to the wayside. At the same time I can see how it is important to prioritize the closeness I have with certain things in order to maintain healthy balance.