Balance

Today I got in my car like I have every day for the past three years, wishing my speaker on the left driver door worked, lamenting the lack of balance in my musical experience. I am one of those who listens to their music maybe a tad louder than I should when driving- rendering the imbalance impossible to ignore. So, like many things in life one can't fix, but also can't ignore, one learns to live with it. I learned to live with it.

I wonder how many things we learn to live with, that we become accustomed to in ways that diminish our awareness. I recall talking to someone about learning to live in dysfunction. I likened it to a place I worked at several years ago- it was so incredibly dysfunctional (it was the fashion design business) that, as I cut my teeth and moved up the ladder to become an executive, I learned it in a dysfunctional way. I did really well, and made more money than I ever made since- but after I left that company, I didn't realize how I had acclimated to the dysfunction- I knew how to work inside of that, but in a fully functioning company with certain widely accepted standards of practice- I had to struggle.

Or- I recall once when my 12 string guitar went out of tune- I had no idea how to tune it. So I made up some really great songs while it was in its out-of-tune-but-dissonant-in- a-cool-way state, ones that I can still hear in my head today, but can't for the life of me duplicate. Because when the guitar was tuned, the songs were gone. They relied on its state of dysfunction to exist.

How often have I done that, I wonder? How often have you? Its probably an age old dilemma, but I like to untangle a knot that binds me to any outdated concept, and this is no exception.

Back to today, my car, the speakers. I often adjust the bass in my music because too much bass makes the passenger side speakers shake, being the ones from which the majority of the sound comes out- the left ones work, but just barely. I was scrolling through the adjustment settings when I decided to try one I somehow had not noticed in the three years I have owned my car. One that said 'balance'. Suddenly, there was equal music coming from both sides of my car and I was sitting suddenly in a surround sound vehicle, and I discovered I actually have an amazing sound system in my car. I had no idea!!

And life is like that. The solution to a dilemma is often right in front of our faces but we just somehow don't see it. Attention and awareness requires that we slow down, and sometimes follow a hunch, or try something we never have before. Or stop and realize that we might not be seeing something that is within reach. If I did that with every dilemma, just trusted that the solution was close at hand and I should just pause and pay attention, I have a feeling some parts of my life would go a bit more smoothly.