“Don't confuse symmetry with balance.” -Tom Robbins

If you've ever watched a toddler try to walk across a room, you know that it's a comical scene. As this new walker waddles the distance, each step is taken with extreme caution and deliberate thought. The child is hilariously focused on matching each right-step with the left. Once in a while, he'll get too ambitious and try to run, which of course, lands him on the floor with that deer-in-headlights acceptance of inevitability. Then it's back up again to reinstate the purposeful balance.

As we walked to dinner two nights ago, my brother and I discussed Steve Jobs' early-day diets and their possible link with the pancreatic cancer that ended his life. Now I have way too many friends in med school to speculate on this topic of which I know very little, but I do have the Isaacson-researched account of Steve's illness. After experimenting with 2-day fruit fasts, Steve in his self-diagnosed "typical nutso way" started fasting for weeks or more. While these fasts are meant to detoxify, they can actually do long-term harm. Though these fasts may not cause cancer, they overwork the pancreas causing osteoporosis or even heart failure. 

When I first met him a few years ago, I recognized that one of my friends had the most stringent exercise and diet regimens I had ever witnessed. In fact, I was sometimes embarrassed to eat in front of him or see him at the gym for fear of his judgment. A few months ago, I learned that he was on crutches. "What happened?!" I asked, imagining some freak-accident involving mountain climbing or a marathon race. "My knee had been bothering me for a year. I was just ignoring it." Needless to say, being on crutches, away from what he loved to do most (be active) has left him with an abundance of time to introspect. Recently, he told me, "You know, I've realized I went way to far with my exercising. I used to work out every single day, even when I didn't feel like I could. Even when a day of rest would have been more beneficial to me." 

Yesterday, my friend and I were strolling to the park. "Today is so gorgeous," she said as she took in the moment. "What am I doing with my life?" I asked as I crumbled into a slew of questions and worries about every aspect of my life. My friend didn't interrupt. I guess she has known me long enough to just let me get everything out before trying to knock any sense into me. When I finally paused for a breath, she responded matter-of-factly, "I think you need to start writing again. Now that you're done with your book you have too much time to think." "Maybe you're right." "I'm definitely right." 

Later in the evening, I went to a dance show called "Courage." Deeply moved by the 2011 tsunami in Japan, the dancer choreographed an entire show based on human resilience, from Rosa Parks' struggle with segregation to an ancient temple dancer's determination to maintain the purity of her art against corruption. In what turned out to be a somewhat metaphysical representation of the theme, I found the show to be a powerful demonstration of courage not because of the stories depicted, but because of the internal and external balance the dancer exuded as she swept across the stage. At some level, courage is the ability to restore balance. 

One of the most difficult aspects of young adulthood is finding your own balance, regardless of artificial, semantic balance around you. Semantic balances like "a black world and a white world," "drive and laziness," or "fruits and fat." We want so badly to sprint towards that word with the positive connotation, but it's when we achieve inner balance that we will find ourselves enveloped with the courage to pursue what we believe to be meaningful and the resilience to fight back against what we don't believe in. Forget sprinting. Go forth and teach yourself how to walk again.