Yin & Yang

This week has been about finding balance. Some of my states of mind over the past several days: happiness for all the families who received their referrals and now have seen their babies... dejection because the wait seems interminable and the idea of welcoming a new daughter into our lives seemed like a mirage in the desert of my imagination (okay, the worst, most dreadful metaphor ever but somehow it captures my feelings of desperation and deprivation).

In other words this week was the best of times and the worst of times (apologies to Charles Dickens). I figured I'd either take to my bed like some Victorian heroine and pull the covers over my head for the next 8/12/18 months or find some way to reconcile these feelings. I began to reflect on the idea of balance between opposite feelings.

So here (courtesy of Wikepedia) is some information on yin and yang, the Chinese philosophy of balance in the universe:

Yin and yang are opposites. Everything has its opposite—although this is never absolute, only relative. No one thing is completely yin or completely yang. Each contains the seed of its opposite. For example, winter can turn into summer; "what goes up must come down".

Yin and yang are interdependent. One cannot exist without the other. For example, day cannot exist without night. Light cannot exist without darkness.

Yin and yang are usually held in balance—as one increases, the other decreases.

Yin and yang can transform into one another. At a particular stage, yin can transform into yang and vice versa. For example, night changes into day; warmth cools; life changes to death. However this transformation is relative too. Night and day coexist on Earth at the same time when shown from space.

Part of yin is in yang and part of yang is in yin. The dots in each serve as a reminder that there are always traces of one in the other. For example, there is always light within the dark (e.g., the stars at night); these qualities are never completely one or the other.