EASY DANCING

     Like I do when I’m driving, I must stay both alert and relaxed as I live my life today. When driving on frozen streets, I have to be observant for especially slippery sections of the road, but I also have to remain relaxed enough at the wheel to maneuver the car with deftness and flexibility. I have to stay both tense and easy-going. I must be resolute, in the sense of unswervingly watching every inch of the way ahead, but I must also be supple and even a little blasé as I adjust to the shifting circumstances. I sometimes picture a good driver on a bad road as having a furrowed forehead (the alertness) but a slight and honest smile (the easygoingness). He’s working hard but still somehow taking pleasure in the situation. I picture myself all day today in a similar way. Certainly I have to be totally alert to every shade and tone of things as the hours pass. Like all of us, I will sometimes wish I had fifty eyes instead of just two, and a few dozen ears wouldn’t hurt. Thousands of mental and verbal events will happen today, and I want to be aware of as many of them as possible. However, I must always balance my watchfulness with an equal amount of lightness and easing up. Living a safe but lighthearted life often resembles steering across a frozen mountain road, and while I’m ever on the alert I also need to be relaxed enough to move through the labyrinth that’s always created when a free-thinking, restive senior citizen steers through the streets of a new day. I need to ‘drive’ myself with awareness of the coolest kind, with an attentiveness that feels like easy dancing.