7 April

Kids have to learn to balance. Adults think they don’t. But all human activities need balance, and as we do more complex things as we get older, we should be learning new balancing as we do. But we often don’t, we tighten and hold on to ourselves, usually without realising this is what we’re doing. A slumping and slouching person, for example, is an unbalanced person. I wonder if one of the causes of our bodily woes as we age is our rectilinear towns and cities. Dominated by straight lines and flat surfaces, even at the furniture level. Balancing is easier on flat surfaces, but it can also encourage us to forget that everything we do is actually an act of balance. So we stop learning to balance in our new activities, we hold and tighten ourselves instead. If our environment were more irregular, balance might be more forced on our awareness.