Hills and valleys.

Ebbs and flows.

Peaks and troughs.

Our lives are not a straight shot. They are not just the steady incline to a climax or the gradual descent into a craggy trench. They are always both of these things for as long as we live.

It doesn’t matter where we are or how far we’ve come; none of us is exempt from the constant balancing of the universal scales. We don’t outgrow the nature of life. We don’t reach a level of success and then become immune to the intrinsic design of this living business.

We are perpetually in movement, see-sawing between the high point and low, confused and disoriented as to why. (Silly mortals, we are always forgetting to heed the warning about not getting too comfortable.)

Again and again, we find that a frenzied, full period will gave way to a quiet one. Isolation will be broken by companionship. Grief will rise into grace. Anger will lift into forgiveness. Familiarity will flow into floating strangely through the unknown. Happiness will wilt into sorrow, only to swell upwards to fulfillment. Two years of perceived emotional torture will all of a sudden give way, revealing the clearest path up, up, up, disappearing past the horizon that is our deepest desire. And seven months of success will slope into stagnation.

It’s all a bit annoying, if you ask me. Give me something I can count on, I say. Let it be the ground if it may or let it stay the sky.

Only life is designed to give us the maximum amount of joy. As it turns out, the magic is in the moment when everything, for an instant, is perfectly aligned.

When the see-saw hangs precisely perpendicular to the ground and the sky, and we are miraculously level with whatever we have been seeking–that’s the sweetest spot. It’s right before we reach the apex. It’s right after we’ve carved our way out of a ditch. And the only way to continually strike that precious balance is to continue to propel and dive, push off and settle, ebb and flow.