100 Words for 12/2/12 Balance

 

When I am emotionally off-kilter, at first I do not know what is wrong. After gaining five pounds, I begin to realize there’s an issue here. I’ve been stressing about developing Alzheimer’s disease myself and that’s a big deal. Bob is much less able to communicate with me, which hurts a lot. I know that. I’ve been working on the Holocaust memoir of my grandparents, grappling with the torment of their seven years of walking-- hiding and hungry. I need to cope better and relieve more of this stress than Zumba provides. Do I need the structure of Weight Watchers?

I do need to finish writing this part of the book and turn to more pleasant pursuits of the grandparents’ successful transition to life in America with their children and grandchildren all safe, but I know the next book which will be about my husband’s  and my experience with the senior care industry will also be stressful to write well. No one can remove the stressors in life; my retired friends seem to manufacture them. Some stress over their golf score, others micro-manage their stock portfolios making changes with each political shift of the wind. Some stress about their families, worried about potential outcomes they can neither predict nor change.

I believe it is all about balance which of course is not original; the Book of Ecclesiastes said it first:

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

Let’s try in this hectic holiday month to seek balance for ourselves and peace in our minds and hearts.