High-Wire Hijinx

Squibs & Blurbs

by Jerry Zimmerman

TEANECK, NJ—(Weekly Hubris)—11/8/10—Getting older. Losing my sweet wife to cancer. Having all my children move away. Finding new aches and pains every day.

Having a grandchild. Discovering new mastery in what I do. Loving my kids as the adults that they are. Treasuring those around me.

Yin and yang, up and down, good and bad, sad and happy . . . having and not having.

Yin and yang and so many more words for one thing: acceptance, soul, a whole life, samadhi, nirvana, Buddha, Jesus, God, the way of the world.

But today, let’s call it yin and yang.

Yin and yang, or the idea that everything contains its opposite, or gives rise to its opposite, seems a bit easier to grasp. Although the experience of this philosophy is common and often very powerful, for some reason (the human condition?), its lessons are usually transitory and elusive.

A small example. I’ve had a serious back sprain lately, serious enough that walking or standing was excruciating for several weeks. When it finally began to subside, I found myself walking up the stairs in my house one day.

Holy Moly!! I realized I was walking up the stairs again and I was overjoyed. After losing such a basic skill in my life, having it returned seemed such a wonderful gift—I was almost bowled over.

Now I am very much better, and, though I am still pleased almost every time I walk up the stairs, the thrill is fading and the normalcy of it all has started to return. However, there is a trace of thankfulness that continues to linger in me, and I feel it and nurture it. I wonder how long it will last . . . .

I see in my walking, there is the possibility of not walking.

I sense in my crying, there is the possibility of laughing.

It is so easy to imagine scenarios in which you could lose what you have, which could be just about anything or everything. And, more difficult to believe, any loss may be surprisingly replaced by a wonderful new gift.

There is always yin and yang because the first rule of the cosmos is movement, flux, alteration. Nothing remains static; everything moves and breathes and changes. Depending on the yin or the yang, believing in only the good or the bad is a fool’s game. Yet, of course, I am the fool who always falls for it.

But not so completely. After being thrown high on the crests of great happiness and swooshed down into the troughs of despair more than once, or twice, or three times, or . . . well, I’m beginning to get the idea.

And not being such a staunch believer leaves me in a new place, a place becoming more familiar yet often ridiculously unstable. This place is on the high wire, balancing between the yin and the yang, whatever they are, frantically waving my arms or quietly breathing, doing whatever I can to keep my balance and not fall into the morass on the left or the right.

Here I am on the tightrope, a guy who hates heights and can barely watch the high-flying acts in a circus without losing his breath. In this death-defying position, I try to do the one thing I must do: learn how to balance.

Or, Kaput! yet again.

As my knees stop shaking and my breath evens out, something wonderful happens. I relax and see where I am. Being down there, captured and squeezed into whatever is waiting, is no longer so enticing.

At last, I have the most fantastic view, a view of it all.

At least for a momeeee . . . . . . .

THUD!