I thought about all the times I've teetered on that line. Usually, like my friend, the line is between: am I doing enough or do I have unrealistic goals and am''''' too much on my case? I can be doing something important to me, like writing, or something I wish I never had to do, like vacuuming, or just about anything at all, and I often get the feeling that the writing isn't deep enough or the vacuuming not complete enough. Is that right, or am I suffering from a perverse perfectionism, the kind that tells me everything I do falls short of some imagined, abstract standard buried deep inside.
There are other times when I teeter on the line because I have a decision to make. Should I walk away from this man because we've gone past the point of no return, or should I stay and try to work things out? Would it be better to leave this town where things never quite work out, or stay and try harder? My busy worried mind can come up with reasons for either side. So I remain teetering, caught by ambivalence in an anxiety of doubt.
And this despite my knowing by now that the problem isn't so much the relative merits on each side of the line - although they're important, too - it's ambivalence itself, a very old pattern, almost my default position. I learned to doubt myself as a child and that doubt has carried forward and still undermines the adult I am. It's the issue behind the issue. And I know my ego can convince me of anything, and then a moment later the reverse. I know that desire, self-interest and willfulness all cloud my view. It's easy to blame them, because I know they are very real, but knowing all that doesn't stop me from choosing one thing and quickly thinking the other is what I should really do. I teeter on the line.
What will help me act despite my ambivalence? What will give me the courage to get off the fine line. Many insights about my ego, fear and doubt have helped me chip away at. But there's something else. Actual change comes when I go deep inside, as deep as the ambivalence is. I have to sit with it, feel it and embrace it. I have to surrender my guilt that I have it, my despair that I can really change. The only way I've found to do that is to get quiet and try to clear my mind. To meditate. All through the day, I can take deep breaths and feel the expansiveness a clear mind brings. Eventually, I see that one side of the fine line emerges as the one I want to choose. I find the courage to act because experience has taught me that there aren't any mistakes, the kind that I thought would doom me or plunge me into the abyss. There is only what I do and choose, and if it doesn't work out disaster wont' come because I know there is a refuge inside me that will never let me down.
My ambivalence used to be a giant ball filling the sky but step by step I've brought it down to size until it's so small I can put it in my pocket, look forward and walk on.
