CONNECTING THE DOTS

I have always had the conviction that minimizing risk and reducing losses would be attained by always remaining in the middle. Keeping my balance to avoid swinging to the extremes, because extremes mean a hard fall.

But remaining in the middle is extremely exhausting. I found it even impossible. Avoiding swinging to the extremes is like walking on a tightrope. One can never be exactly in the middle for any length of time…and if you try you will fall! If you look at it closely; being in the middle is not a static state, rather a dynamic one.

The tightrope walker continuously moves from the left to the right, from the right to the left… When he feels that he has moved too much to the left and there is fear of falling, he immediately balances himself by moving to the opposite; and there is a moment when he is in the middle, yet again, he may fall!

For a large part of my life, I did my best to avoid extremes. “I will lose this person. I will lose this job. I will miss those benefits. I will irritate my boss. I will let down my friend. I will ruin my peace of mind,” I kept telling myself. All the time having the urge of not wanting to do wrong to myself and others by taking sides.   

But when I became drained from trying to keep this balance, I looked at the matter closely. “I cannot be in the middle all the time! Because, like a tightrope walker, I keep on moving from left to right and from right to left…this is the only way to remain in the middle,” I said to myself.  

No matter how hard I tried to deselect any one extreme to avoid risk, the middle came at a greater cost. And the problem is, this cost was unnoticeable at the time! You discover it in the long run. It is like an upward trend that was being built over time.  

I discovered that my mind has gone on autopilot mode, all the time, unwillingly…just avoiding extremes without thinking, without fair assessment, without exploring the matter, without considering the merits, without investigating the pros and cons. The mind has developed the habit of becoming in an idle state all the time, the mind now favoured rest, loved shortcuts, liked to remain choiceless!  However, by default, the mind is a chooser, neutrality is against its nature; and that’s the problem. When you force your mind against its nature, it becomes a piece of rusted wheel that doesn’t function properly, if at all.

Remaining available to both polarities is the secret of balancing. And whatsoever happens and wherever you are, right or left, in the middle or not, enjoy the moment in its totality.

I discovered that being in the middle is the worst kind of extreme one could be in, because it is almost impossible, and doesn’t remain for long. Look at your clock! It continues only because the pendulum goes on moving from left to right…from right to left…Yes, each time it passes through the middle, and there is a moment of that middleness, but only a moment.

When you pass from happiness to sadness, and from sadness to happiness, there is a moment of utter silence…exactly in the middle. You might feel lost, bewildered, hopeless, and your chest tightened. But that’s a moment that must be lived through anyway, no matter what you had done to avoid that moment, you wouldn’t have! Enjoy that too…Life has to be lived in all its dimensions, only then is life rich…The alive person is neither this nor that nor in the middle…he is a constant movement, he is a flow.

I promised myself to never drain my effort again by avoiding extremes. I promised myself to remember that extremes are part of the process, not something to be avoided.  

So, is it worth the cost to always be in the middle?  

Tell me your point of view in the comments.