| Occasionally, I like to stare into the glitter of the night sky and
search out the common shapes and stars. Surely all of us have done this before, curious to
see if we can catch a glimpse of Orion wielding his mighty sword or Themis proudly raising
her balance. The night sky fascinates me—polka-dots flying by, floating on nothing.
We are another portion of the pendulum—the planets pushing and pulling us around the
sun all the while—waiting for something to knock us off the hinges and let us swing
freely into space. But something keeps us where we are, forbidding the earth to roam
freely—gravity. What is more important, I am referring to balance. I am not speaking
of the balance we use to measure mass or weight, but the balance that aligns the planets,
keeps Earth on its axis. I am referring to the balance that keeps Earth from abandoning
its orbit to collide with the sun—incinerating this world we call home. What would happen if balance did not exist? Moments in our history illustrate the devastation that can occur in a universe without balance. In 1908, the people of Tunguska, Siberia witnessed horrifically the effects of temporary imbalance. S.B. Semenov, a local farmer recalls, "the sky was split in two, and high above the forest the whole northern part of the sky appeared to be covered with fire" (Frazier, p.17). This blazing ball of mass immersed 800,000 acres of forestry in fire. Trees lay flat to the earth as spokes in a wheel around the epicenter of the impact. Known in the history books as "Black Tuesday," the Stock Market crash of 1929 is an illustration of political imbalance. Another dangerous imbalance occurs in us, an imbalance of the self, and results in numerous diseases, genetic defects, and chemical imbalances (eg: Manic Depression, Down's Syndrome, Diabetes). Balance, the way I see it, is a tool, an innate drive and universal link in us all. It’s the way we can know without religion telling us that there is a God. Lets examine for a moment the five original elements—water, wind, wood, earth and fire. Each element acts as balance and counter-balance: water floods the earth; wind destroys wood; water destroys wood, water extinguishes fire, and fire consumes the wind. If we eliminate water from this delicate system the land dies and fire reigns, burning away the oxygen in the air, stripping the globe of all life. Similarly, discarding any of the other elements will make for a world that is unstable and unfit to sustain life. |
Copyright 1998 Michael Wisniach. Background Image Copyright Verety 1998.