Seeking Balance

You know that balance has been wanting in your life when you have gone from eating out seven to eight times a week to once in seven to eight weeks, for having airport lounges being an extension of your living room to not being on a plane for close to three years. Yet the lack of balance does not disturb you in ways that you might expect to, there are no forces of adjustment at play and that creates the illusion of equilibrium.

The signs of unrest and discontent are so subtle that you almost miss them. You are routinely disappointed by the food when you do eat out and your own cooking is death by ennui. You tell yourself you would have traveled more if vacation time was more abundant and airfares were not so ridiculously high.

You look at the picture of a peddler pouring tamarind syrup from an urn with a spigot on a Cairo street in Mediterranean Cookery by Claudia Roden. It fills you with wanderlust and longing for soul food at the same time. It is a sign perhaps of wanting to root for comfort and branch out into the unexplored for adventure.