It was late afternoon, and the thin layer of frail gray clouds that had made their first appearance that morning before sunrise still hung low in the sky, masking but not overpowering the sun as it made its way across the southern horizon. There was a hint of a winter chill in the air, but the absence of any sort of breeze had allowed the day to remain at least tolerable, for the most part. I knew I had barely an hour of daylight left, and I also knew that there was no way I’d finish my fence repair project before dusk overtook me and I would be forced to hurry to finish my chores and take my energy indoors.
I’d started my day well before that same low-hanging sun had made its daily rise in the southeast, and I knew I wouldn’t retire that evening until several hours after it had disappeared behind the mountains to the southwest of my valley home. My coaching responsibilities with the local high school girls’ basketball team demanded my attention at 6 a.m., where I pretended to be as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as I encouraged a passel of grade 9 and grade 10 girls to be as we worked through an early-morning practice.
On my way home, I stopped at an old cowboy friend’s place, where his daughter and I gathered up a half-dozen hens, packed them in a little pen and loaded them in the back of the pickup. It was kind of a sober last roundup. In recent months, age and health issues had pretty much put an end to my friend’s cowboying days, and now the merciless speed of those inevitable conditions was expediting the complete dispersal of the last of his livestock – his beloved tiny flock of laying hens. I promised him I’d treat the old girls right as I introduced the new genetics into my own sorry little herd of hens.
Upon returning home with the cluckers, I hurried through the morning chores. I had an appointment with the banker in town, some 40 kilometres to the north. Thanks in part to the current calf market, it wasn’t one of those really unpleasant meetings, but it was another time-consuming task for which I had little appetite on this day. And since I was going to be in town, my wife gave me a short grocery and to-do list to take care of in her stead. By the time I returned home, it was just a tick or two before noon.
Thanks to the relatively mild winter weather up to that point, I wasn’t yet into full-on hay-feeding mode, but the grass was rapidly depleting and I was feeding the cows about a half-ration of hay in an effort to coax every little bit of energy I could from the remaining vestiges of grass. By the time I finished with the feeding, I figured I’d better skip lunch so I could spend a little time on the dilapidated portion of the fence, which still remained unnoticed by the cows but would surely soon become an irresistible temptation to those very same bovines.
I gathered up a spool of barbed wire, a fence stretcher, a pair of pliers, a bucket of staples, a hammer and a bit of reluctant resolve and made my way to the formerly stout fence corner that now acted as a monument to procrastination. Upon arrival at my destination, it became painfully obvious that the task before me was much greater than my remaining available time and desire to finish would allow. In light of this new but not unexpected revelation, I ran back to the shop and grabbed an electric fence charger, an old truck battery to power it and just enough hot wire to string across the gaping 10-metre hole in the fence. In about 20 minutes, I had constructed a permanently temporary solution to my immediate problem.
As the sun began to disappear behind the western hills, I reckoned I had just enough time to clean up a little bit and change my clothes before I headed back into town to the livestock committee meeting, where the few of us foolish enough to volunteer for the job would cuss and discuss the newly proposed dress code for next year’s youth livestock show. After a two-hour discussion to solve a 20-minute problem, I headed for home, where a cold dinner and an unfinished letter of recommendation for a scholarship application for one of my former basketball girls awaited me. I finished the letter and pressed send about 30 ticks before midnight, more than ready to crash and lay my head on the pillow, where I could hopefully rest and recharge enough to jump into the fray again tomorrow.
Before I faded off into a sleep that would probably be interrupted by a series of nonsensical dreams somehow centered on flightless, hockey-playing cows with wings, I contemplated the fallacy of a life of balance. Over the course of my life, I’ve read dozens of quotes, if not books, and heard scores of inspirational speeches aimed at directing one how to achieve balance in life. It was at that hazy moment between consciousness and fitful sleep that my quasi-epiphany flashed across my mind: True balance in life is a myth. More amazing than the inspiration itself was the calm reassurance I felt in the moment.
I’ve spent a good share of my life trying to navigate the uneven waves of the search for balance, alternating from the crest to the depths and never feeling satisfied in my efforts. I now seemed to realize that my inability to get everything to balance out wasn’t necessarily the colossal failure I’d once deemed it to be. For me, anyway, I was coming to realize that my life’s seesaw may continue to tip from one thing to another in the constant search for that elusive balance, but that reality need not be automatically cast onto the heap of my many shortcomings. As long as my mind and full efforts were grounded with my feet where I stood, no matter the ephemeral nature of the task at hand, I was in the right place.
Balance, for all its promise and appeal, may not be in the cards for some of us in our current stage of life, but that shouldn’t diminish the value of honest effort spent on doing your best, no matter where you stand.
