By Adina Morris INSIGHT OUT
Sometimes I feel like I live inside a circus! Lions and tigers, Oh My!Running around in circles with a blow horn hoping that someone will listen to me!Jumping through hoops of fire, praying I don’t get burned!And walking a shoestring of a tightrope, refusing to look at my reality down below! Doesn’t sound as glamorous as the Big Top anymore…
But then the piece de resistance, and the one I probably resonate the most with, is the Juggler! How they keep all of those balls up in the air is amazing to me!
I was once told by a very wise woman that in our world, we are all jugglers. We have so many people that rely on us and numerous responsibilities to manage daily, and so we juggle. We throw everything up in the air, and then they come back down on us and we are in a forever cycle of shuffling each item around, from hand to hand and back up in the air again; and so it continues.
So how does one become a successful juggler? The key she explained to me is in the balls. You see, not all of the balls are made the same way. Some are made of glass, and I have to be extra careful to never allow them to drop, lest they crash and break into an irreparable mess of crushed glass, hopes and dreams. Then, there are the balls made of wood. These are also important, and I need to be careful not to drop them because, honestly, they don’t bounce back up so well. However, if they did fall, I could still salvage them, although complicated it may be. And then there are the amazing rubber balls! These little guys are a bit tricky at times. You see they are very small, yet there are so many of them, way more than the other two kinds of balls. However, what is truly fantastic about these balls is that if they drop, they bounce right back up!
These balls are really a great mini representation of the many components of the daily juggling act we call our everyday lives. The glass balls are our relationships with the people in our lives that we love, value and cherish. It is also any of our core beliefs that without, our lives would be missing great strength, meaning and purpose. They are the balls we want to make sure we never drop. The wooden balls are the tasks that keeps our lives running smoothly. Without them, we hit major bumps on the road, however, we do not get totally derailed if they drop, rather just rerouted. And then there are the rubber balls. These are all of the mini tasks that go in and around all of the people and responsibilities in our lives. If we drop one or two here and there, things will not fall apart. They would just get rescheduled. They eventually need to be dealt with, but not necessarily imperative for that very moment, so they may get dropped.
Knowing how to juggle: when to shuffle, throw and drop is the key to every juggler’s success! Why? Because if you were to try throwing all the balls up in the air at once, there’s a good chance they will all come back raining down on your poor head with a vengeance! But if you create a rhythm for yourself of when to throw, shuffle, drop and reintroduce, you will find that the fragile ones do not get dropped, the important ones get taken care of and the rubber ones are managed.
Now it is important to keep in mind that the labels on each of the balls may shift! What is rubber today may become wood tomorrow and vice versa! Knowing and recognizing each day which balls are glass or wood and which ones are the rubber ones will keep you juggling like a pro.
Are you interested in upping your juggler game? Try this exercise on for size!
1. Identify all the balls you are juggling today and name them
2. Label them as glass, wood or rubber
3. Start your shuffle! Throw your glass balls up in the air first, now add in the wood ones. Keep the rhythm moving by shuffling them from hand to hand as they come down and then throw them back up in the air. Repeat!
4. Now add in the rubber balls! Keep shuffling!
5. Never allow the glass ones to drop, at all costs, and to only put the wood ones down if absolutely necessary, rather try to reorganize the wood ones among the glass ones without dropping either.
6. Keep the rubber balls out of your way, dispose of as necessary, complete them and put them down and move to the next one. If a wood or glass one needs precedence, allow a rubber one to drop for today.
This is a game of skill and sometimes we make mistakes. However, if we are knowledgeable about which ones can’t be messed with, our mistakes will be less costly. An educated juggler is the most successful!
So become an expert at your craft and keep all the right balls in the air! And always but always, give all of our balls up to Hashem with a heartfelt prayer to help us make the right decisions at the right time and in the right order.
Happy Juggling!