Tonight I was at my meditation class (a 6-week course at the ashram nearby.) I go on Thursday nights for an hour and I sit with two other students in the meditation dome, with a lovely instructor who has a voice that just makes you want to breathe deeply. To begin class, she read us something about how if you live life on the surface, you’re very easily knocked off balance. This resonated very clearly with me, tonight in particular, because of the day I had had.
Thursdays are the days I have been tutoring students this summer. It’s my one day of work, which I do appreciate. It’s a break from the kids and a chance to earn money, which lately we have needed for running the household. On these days, though, I am aware of how fixated I become on the schedule of who I am seeing at what time, on what preparations I need to make for each client, and on where I might have a small break to eat or pee. This very clearly flies in the face of the wisdom I am gaining from meditating, which suggests becoming more removed from all the crap of life and focusing more inward. On these work days, I tend to schedule folks back to back, all day long, to maximize the earnings and minimize the childcare costs that cut into profits. Today got all messed up. It started a day ago when I got my first call from a student who had double-booked herself and needed to cancel. To accommodate her, I said I could see her at 8:00, before my day officially started at 9:00. Then another client couldn’t make her slot, so I called someone else to switch with her. Then, another guy cancelled altogether. This didn’t totally bother me because it gave me a nice break in the middle. But, just before this break, a student didn’t show up. (She had over-slept… yes, I deal mostly with adolescents, so that has its own complications.) To be flexible, I said I could see her a little later, during what was going to be my break. So, my break got all interrupted and I felt all out of whack. Living on the surface.
Then, I came in the house (I tutor in a studio office in the back yard) to get lunch and see the kids and check in with the babysitter. I was walking around the house eating (bad habit, not calm or focused), sort of paying attention to the millions of things the kids were telling me, when the phone rang. It was the bank. Now, it’s not like the bank would normally call us when there is a problem, but I had recently decided that I needed a human contact there, when we had had some over-drafting issues. It’s been a tight month. I made friends with a wonderful woman who, I felt, was on my side in this whole banking endeavor. She was doing some stuff for me with our account and happened to be looking at it today and noticed that we had yet another over-draft, this time in a different account that I use mostly for my business income and paying out childcare. I was shocked because I had been so on top of our finances these last few weeks, given our other over-drafts. As she reported, we had a negative balance. That is sure what I had been feeling like, but it took a call from the bank to help me see that I had been tottering and now even my bank balance was affecting my own balance.
It made me want to try to remember that balance comes from the inside and that I can always go inside to find it. As my meditation instructor has said, even when life is swirling around, you can use your breath to find the eye in the center of that hurricane. My breath can lead me in to a quieter place where I can restore my sense of balance so that I’m not so easily knocked over.
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