Finding Rhythm

There are these beautiful moments you have in life…where suddenly everything aligns into a perfect little burst of happiness. A gorgeous, zen experience, tinged in golden light. They are the moments, as my friend Emily said once, that make you smile when you’re standing in line at the grocery store. They keep you laughing, and maybe even at times, if you live in Africa, keep you sane.

But there are other moments too…bleak, lonely, dark or sad ones. Moments you’d rather forget; moments that can make you face yourself and your limits in a way even you didn’t know was possible.

And then there is every other moment in between.

For a lot of my life I’ve tried to find balance in the middle of this spectrum. I think most people do. You look for ways to mitigate going too far down the “bad” side or resist venturing too far on the “good” side so that any one experience won’t be able to send you careening too far across the continuum. And even if you yourself can’t keep a center, there are all sorts of other relationships and support structures and systems that actually work to shield you from too much chaos on either side.

And that’s wise. There’s a lot of merit in finding that equilibrium. The thing is, it just doesn’t exist here. Well, not really. It’s not that there isn’t a sense of normalcy and ‘balance’ to life here, it’s just that your (or my) ability to mitigate the highs and lows is so clearly and hopelessly beyond my control in so many instances here that after awhile you get used to the idea that you’re not in charge.

As I was running yesterday, looking up at the emerald patchwork of the Uluguru Mountains, and thinking about some recent highs and lows here, it struck me that I was really thankful for all of those experiences…the good, the hard, the challenging, the amazing and everything in between. Because it might be wild and it might be a bit chaotic, but it feels like living to me. It feels full and colorful and exciting and well, good. And that feels good. It feels amazing.

Being forced to surrender my ability to control things and having to let go of my desire to keep myself in the middle of the ‘moments’ continuum has pushed me far this year; sometimes farther than I’d like to go. But it’s made me realize I don’t have to fear the bad moments in life so much. And it has helped me to be braver in not missing out on embracing the really big good moments just because I’m worried the crash back down will be too rough. It’s made me more comfortable with the idea that a lot of life happens on the margins of the spectrum and if you spend all your energy trying to stay in the middle, you miss out on a lot.

I’m not saying that we should all embrace a bi-polar lifestyle, but rather that being here has helped teach me that there is a rhythm to those ups and downs…and in life if you can let yourself go enough to dance to that beat, it’s a beautiful song. The lovely moments make you glad to be alive and the sad ones remind you that you have lived and cared well.

And that’s exactly how I feel about my time here in Tanzania…like it is one big wild, vibrant burst of color and sound, that sometimes is pitch perfect and sometimes misses a beat, but overall has developed into a rhythm that I love to move to and has become my favorite song.