JUGGLING

There's no doubt in my mind that juggling is a SPIRITUAL WEIGHTLIFTER. Whether you be juggl-ER or juggl-EE (the latter being my word for the person who is being juggled to), great pleasure and relaxation can be derived from the experience - except, of course, if someone is juggling chainsaws over your head!

I have been a casual, and somewhat rubbish juggler for almost 2 decades. I first took it up mainly as a challenge to myself - a New Year's Resolution, if you will. I was not, and never have been a smoker, so had no challenge like that to set myself. So I decided to learn to do something I had never done before - I chose that moment because at the time I felt comeltely uselss at everything I tried. Juggling looked cool and also impossible.

It's against the laws of nature to keep more things in the air than you have hands.

Well, as you might imagine, I was totally disastrous for the first 2 weeks. If you've tried to juggle you'll know how hard it can be. The first goal is to throw one ball from each hand in an arc with some sort of rhythm. The hardest part seems to come when you add the infamous, and seemingly illogical (given you have only TWO HANDS!) third ball. I was failing miserably. I just could not get the third ball to go as it should, where I wanted it to go.

Then I read somewhere on a website - one of the first pieces of Internet research I ever carried out, by the way - that if you imagine that an invisible, horizontal hoop runs through the middle of each ball that is in the air, then try to throw the ball that is in your hand through that invisible hoop, you might find things easier. Two broken vases and a dislocated shoulder later, I can vouch that that advice was well founded! I cracked it. And do you know something? I can't think of a sweeter feeling that getting the ball in my hand to got EXACTLY where I wanted it to for the first time. It's indescribably joyous. You want to shout to the world "I did it! I did it!"

Since then I've given public performances (albeit comedic rather than serious) of my juggling and heartily recommend it as a great way to raise your spirits whenever you feel useless, as I did before I first tried it.

Juggling - a justifiable entry in the SPIRITUAL WEIGHTLIFTING Olympics!