Fall Equinox – Balance Is a Lie

I’ve been thinking a lot about balance with the Equinox coming up and all. My life is rarely in balance. I’ve been in the feast or famine pattern for many years. I often work too much; by often I mean like all the time. I’m the type of person who is either all in or all out. There is very little gray area for me. And when we get to this time of the year, when ‘balance’ seems to be the buzzword of the season, I can’t help but think it’s a total lie.

Sure there are two times a year when the light of day and the darkness of night come into equilibrium with each other. At the Fall Equinox for just a moment our world is in balance. For just a moment there is equality. That moment is fleeting and before we know it we fall into autumn (see what I did there?). We shift deeper into the darkness, minute by minute, day by day.

This is life.

We get a glimpse of balance on the Fall Equinox, but it is just one moment, a flash in the pan of the year. In life we get these glimpses of balance too. Moments where we have our stuff together, where it seems like things are going smoothly, where it might feel like we have some semblance of balance going on in our lives. But for most folks this feeling doesn’t last very long at all.

Before too long life falls apart, we face hardships, we have to deal with difficult challenges, we get too sucked in by a project or a new lover or an exciting adventure and things get out of whack. We lose the balance that seemed so steady just a minute ago. The moment of balance can feel just as fleeting as the moment of balance during the Equinox.

We witches and pagans often talk about the balance point of the year and how to bring that into our rituals or celebrations for this holiday. I’ve attended rituals all about balance on the Fall Equinox. I’ve even been at a ritual where we practiced holding physical balance in order to connect to the planetary balance of the moment. This is good, but I think that it is just as important to honor the times when things are out of balance because this happens so much more often.

This Equinox

So this year I am going to celebrate the Equinox a little bit differently:

• I’m going to drink heavily until I lose my equilibrium and fall over.
• I will attempt to crawl into the hammock in the backyard.
• I’ll stand a bat up on the floor, rest my head on its handle, and spin in a circle around it until I fall over or puke.
• I’m going to put my arms out and spin and spin and spin, like Jillie suggests in Practical Magic.

The Fall Equinox is a time to pause, to assess where we are doing a great job being balanced and where our balance might need, well, a little more balance. It is a moment to acknowledge the moment. This Equinox my goal is to honor where I am out of balance, where I need a little work. I want to honor my humanity in all of its mess.

Happy Un-Balanced Equinox!