The see-saw that my Dad made when I was a year old is still in use, next door to where I live now, by my grandchildren and our neighbors.  He welded the steel frame and used a huge board from a job site and it has been painted as needed, always orange, ever since.   Our back yard in Deer Lake Park, back then a quiet wooded neighborhood with maybe 60 of us children in the whole place, was often filled with kids on the see-saw, and for such a simple “toy” if you will, it got the most use.

It is not hard to see-saw but it takes two to work together and it is all about balance.  One can’t always get to be up while the other is always down, one side can’t have ‘more’ or the other side can’t go down, and it has to be even in the middle when you both get on…up and down, fast or slow, it does not matter, what matters is that these two who have decided to become partners go at a similar pace and maintain equilibrium.

Sure, sometimes it can be intense and fast, updownupdownupdown, and sometimes it can be quietly mellow and slow, U p D o w n U p D o w n, truly it matters not the speed or the force it matters only that balance is maintained.  It is really, when you think about it, the first ‘team’ sport we as children play…two people have to work together to make this see-saw work and when one wants to get off the other has no choice, it ends.

I find lately that I am fighting the need to be a “team player” that I want things to be the way I want them to be, and want things to go the way I want them to go, and want things to be balanced in the direction I think they ought to be maintained…but that is not how real life works and I fear that if I don’t understand soon that COMPROMISE has to be part of BALANCE, I am going to find myself missing out on what can become a very happy life…I don’t want to look back with regret I want to look forward with joy.  In order to do that I MUST learn to see-saw again, to stop being so alone in my way of thinking and my way of doing and to be part of a pair again…up and down, together.  Like that lyric I so love; it’s not always rainbows and butterflies it’s compromise that moves us along.