On being Centred

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Neither up nor down...

I went out for a late afternoon walk yesterday and when crossing the road noticed this marking on a lamp post.

I imagine that the painted arrows serve some purpose for either the electricity company or maybe the telephone lines people.

But what the image made me instantly think of was:

The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up;
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only half-way up,
They were neither up nor down.

And from there my mind meandered back in time to this:

Halfway down the stairs
is a stair where i sit.
there isn't any other stair quite like it.
i'm not at the bottom,
i'm not at the top;
so this is the stair where I always stop.
Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up
And it isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery,
It isn't in town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head.
It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!

Poem by A.A. Milne ~ Illustration by E.H. Shepard

~

... and then I mused on this place of neither up nor down
and being half way up and not really anywhere
and I thought that it is rather like that position
from where we sometimes climb to highs
and sometimes fall to lows
but the place to where we can return
to retrieve a sense of equanimity.


The symbol made me think that:

to be happy or content
does not imply
that we do not
experience pain and loss
or exaltation and joy


to be balanced
doesn't mean
that we do not waver
and


to be centred
doesn't mean
that we do not oscillate



When jostled, buffeted
or buoyed and bounced
by the ebb and flow of life
we can learn to return
to that place half way up,
half way down,
neither up nor down



We can find ourselves once again
and reclaim those feelings
of serenity and calm




What do you use
as your ballast
when you feel off centre?

Oh Happy Days

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