The Trance of Keeping It All Together

By Nancy Hall, M.A.

My son had a hard time adjusting to first grade. He’d come home tired and crabby, and the smallest provocation would trigger a full-blown meltdown. I’m talking nuclear. I had heard about other kids being very tired after a full school day, but I was not prepared for such hard-core trench warfare.

My dear friend Sue has kids older than mine, and she explained the dynamic perfectly. Imagine you start your day with an empty tray, like the ones servers carry in restaurants. Someone walks by and places a half-full glass of water on your tray. “No big deal,” you think. “I can handle just one glass.” Then another person places another glass on your tray; a third person does the same. “It’s just a few glasses. I can arrange them just so and everything is in balance.” Now imagine that throughout your whole day, people are adding to your tray. It gets fuller and fuller and harder and harder to keep steady. When you think you’ve got just about all you can handle, one more person comes by and puts a teeny-tiny Dixie cup of water on the tray and **KERPLOOSH!** Everything goes flying. Glasses. Water. The tray ends up on the ground. But it was just one teeny-tiny Dixie cup? How could it create such a calamity?

My insightful friend pointed out that this is what first grade is like. As my son went through his day, his metaphorical tray was getting loaded up. And all it took was me adding my little Dixie cup for him to buckle under all that pressure.

As we grow up, we get better at stacking things on our trays. But we can be so caught up in trying to balance and hold on to everything, that we don’t realize that we’re buckling under the pressure as well. Our arm and hand certainly send signals, but we ignore them, telling ourselves that we can handle the pressure and take on just a little bit more.

Our bodies are very good and sending messages to our brains when we’re in physical or emotional distress. Our stomachs tie up in knots; our heads pound. When we practice mindfulness, we can begin to pay attention to these important cues.

Meditation is a path to mindfulness. It allows us to take time to listen to our bodies so we can learn what we need to attend to. While meditation might seem passive, it is actually quite active. It is simultaneously a stillness and an awakening. Meditation does not have to be complicated but it requires a commitment.

So as you go through your day, make the commitment to becoming a bit more mindful. That way, you can adjust accordingly to avoid upending your tray.

Join me this Saturday, 9/27, noon-2pm, at The Awakening Center for a meditation workshop. Registration is required and the fee is $20. Contact me at nancyhalltac@gmail.com to sign up.

Also, I will be starting a weekly meditation group in October. Visit and “Like” The Awakening Center’s Facebook page or check back here for details as they come!