Wisdom
A constant balancing act; example of the tightrope walker
March 7th 2011
Some circus acts have a lot to teach us because of the ways they resemble the battles humans must win in their inner life: taming tigers, lions and panthers, making bears and elephants dance, jumping through flaming hoops, juggling, leaping into space and catching hold again, walking on a wire, and so on. Let’s just take the example of tightrope walkers: to stay balanced, they move with their arms outstretched or use a long horizontal pole. They have constantly to correct their position – to the right, to the left, a bit higher, a bit lower… Human beings are in the same situation, for life is a tightrope, and if they do not want to fall they have to keep thinking of adding a little here, taking away a little there, to stay in balance.
Our centre of balance is in the ears, and symbolically wisdom is connected with the ears. People are wise when they know how to stay in balance, how to rectify any situation. And clearly, the expression ‘rectify the situation’ shows that in life things always tend to lean too far in one direction or another and that each time we have to redress the balance.