The Seesaw of Elation and Despair

It is always so in growth. You make a step. You feel the freshness of who you are, then the fear comes and grabs you again.

 It reminds me of the dance of the principal.

I went to a parent’s meeting in the school of one of my children. We sat at tables that were arranged in an open C shape. In the middle of the opening, not touching any of the sides, was a single table, ready for the principal. Everybody came already and all the seats were taken. More people came than was expected. The last one who came in did not find a seat. Without thinking much he took the principal’s chair, added it to the last table at one of the ends of the C shape, and sat down in it. We all waited. The principal came a bit late. Maybe he wanted to make the point that without him nothing can happen.

He wanted to sit at his table, but there was no chair there. He looked around and saw that there was an empty chair near one of the tables and he could go and sit there. He started walking toward the empty chair, but as he was walking, he had the feeling that something was wrong. He did not want to give up his important position at the head of the congregation. He stopped and turned around toward his table. But there was no chair there, so he turned again toward the place among us. But his sense of importance stopped him again. He did not want to be one of us. He wanted to be the head of us. So he turned toward his desk again, and so he danced there, back and forth, back and forth.

This was the dance of the principal.

When we discover a bit of relief from our inhibiting mental forms, we do the same dance sometimes. We are happy to let go of the burden. But then we remember that this burden was there for a reason. Most probably we decided long ago to install this thought pattern in our mind because it saved us from something fearful. So we too enter into this dance, and like a seesaw we go from happiness to despair, from happiness to despair.