Choose the metaphor that best fits: Are you feeling like a passenger in a small wooden boat tossed in a gale on the high seas in the dead of a starless night? Or a little bird clinging to a high branch of a huge palm tree swaying in the ferocious wind of a deadly hurricane? Or an ostrich with her head in the sand of the trembling earth, the rest of your body trembling with it? Or maybe you have a much better metaphor for how you’re feeling? 

The fact is, as we can all admit, things are way off balance these days. And the tumult, turmoil, turbulence, whirlwind – call it what you wish – is, for the most part, manmade. That man holds the title of what used to be known as “leader of the free world.” But in his first one hundred days in his second chance at the U.S. presidency, he’s taken a wrecking ball to most of our previous assumptions and expectations about his lofty office. 

Now, as a result of his extreme actions and erratic behavior, heads throughout the world are spinning so fast many of us have lost our footing. The whole world, it seems, has lost what little balance it once had.

There used to be what the U.S. always prided itself on: checks and balances on the presidency. But that’s no longer the case. This new, old, white-supremacist president appears to have the other branches of government in the pocket of his dark blue suit. Even at this distance – I live 2,242 miles from Washington, DC, in a beautiful oasis called San Miguel de Allende, Mexico – things look bleak (although I’m deeply grateful not to live in the eye of the storm). Of the thousand-plus American expats living here in SMA, I’d say we’re all pretty rattled by these recent international developments.

 According to an Opinion piece by Thomas Edsall in today’s New York Times, “How Does a Stymied Autocrat Deal with Defeat?”: 

“In the most recent New York Times/Siena College survey, conducted April 21 to 24, 66 percent of voters said the word ‘chaotic’ described Trump’s second term well, and 59 percent agreed that ‘scary’ was a good description. Majorities of voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of seven major issues, including immigration, the economy, trade and the Russia-Ukraine war.”

So in the midst of all this chaos and fear, it’s no wonder that individuals are behaving erratically too. Have you noticed how many family members and friends – to say nothing of strangers – have been, to use the rough vernacular, going off their rockers? Lashing out, flaring up, like some combustible material, at the least provocation? I have.

It’s all so exhausting. What to do? Where to go to find sanity, strength, centeredness? A Himalyan monastery? Uh…that’s not for me. 

Some of the people I’ve spoken with recently have chosen, for their sanity’s sake, to ignore all the awful news and proceed with their lives as if everything was “normal.” Call me a glutton for punishment, but I can’t seem to do that. Instead of running from a burning building as a normal person would, I’m like the firefighter racing toward the fire, wishing I had a longer, more effective hose, wishing I could help put out the flames.

Yes, I seem to be part bombero (firefighter), part forensic scientist searching for the cause of the crime, part journalist needing to follow the story in search of the truth, part dog digging for a buried ham bone.

While some others escape the depressing news by reading light fiction, I’ve been reading heavy nonfiction, such as the new bestseller by Katherine Stewart, MONEY, LIES, AND GOD, which seeks to uncover the powerful inner workings of the “Christian” right. Eye-opening reading, if you don’t mind becoming even more depressed.

(found on Facebook)

Over the more than ten years I’ve been writing this WOW blog and sharing my views from the heart, I’ve touched on the topic of “balance” a number of times, sometimes suggesting ways to achieve it. To me, “balance” is a key word, because it applies to most everything in life. Balance is a never-ending challenge for me – and I’m sure for others as well. Especially now.

I’ve often thought, as I’ve mentioned before, if I were an accomplished visual artist I’d do a large abstract painting depicting a small person on a long tightrope spanning a turbulent body of water, and the person, with her back to the observer, gripping a balancing pole precariously and inching along. This is my view of life. This is my life.

(stock image)

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To read a few of my other WOW posts on the subject of balance, please go to:

• https://blog.bonnieleeblack.com/the-high-wire/
• https://blog.bonnieleeblack.com/humor-me/
• https://blog.bonnieleeblack.com/crazy-days/
• https://blog.bonnieleeblack.com/a-matter-of-balance/

I welcome WOW readers thoughts and suggestions in the Comments section. Please join the conversation. We’re in this together after all.