Lately, life seems to be about extremes. Nothing a chap cannot handle mind you, but still, not the typical fare one faces in a week to week basis. Take the recent pallet-to-foot event. Put me out of commission for about a month and ’twas a month of pain and aggravation. Luckily, nothing else went super awry during that time frame minus a couple hamsters meeting their maker and a slightly sick daughter.

During that month, I was instructed to “do nothing”. Makes for one boring four week stretch, if it were even possible at all. Naps, foot elevation, ice, pills and liquids, repeat. Amazing the balance even during a time like this: the extreme pain then the extreme down time.

This will repeat soon enough with my umbilical hernia surgery (the sequel) in about ten days. I won’t be feeling like doing a thing and guess what? That will be precisely what I am required to do. Meanwhile, life will go on and I will heal and be a better version of myself (and more rested, to boot!).

It is a luxury to me that I am most grateful for. No, I’m not appreciative of the pallet-to-the-foot or the fact that I have to be sliced open and my guts need to be pushed back in. That’s sick and I won’t hear of it. I mean I won’t dwell on the ins and outs. Mostly ins. But still, for a single papa like myself, to get the paid time off work and the healing time itself amongst needing to run a household plus building my writing career? Only in Amurca. Or in my case.. Calgary.

Is there always this apparent balance in our walk that is life? A serial killer spends a few months loving murdering and cannibalizing only to spend his next 70 years in prison. Sure, balance. A strange balance but still. Or you, as a young person, go through years of waiting and celibacy for the perfect mate and then you spend the rest of your life with them in utter bliss. Um, ok, not so much but still. There’s a tetering balance in everything.

Sometimes you earn your balance. A woman works hard for many years, passing on vacations and toiling away while she saves. Then boom.. she can retire early. Or a guy lives and breathes playing guitar, forgoing friends or girlfriends or any other thing deemed a distraction. Then next thing you know he’s the new guitar player for the biggest band in the world. Well earned but still in that cycle of balance. Putting in is what you get out.

So whatever the scenario, or if it seem extreme, subtle or in between, we can’t escape the balance. And in that, there is great comfort.