There's an old Zen story I love about the farmer and his horse.

One day his horse runs away. 

His neighbours come to console him. "Such bad luck," they say.

"Maybe," says the farmer.

The next day the horse returns, bringing three wild horses with it. "Such good luck," the neighbours say.

"Maybe," says the farmer.

The following week his son is thrown from one of the wild horses and breaks his leg. "Such bad luck."

"Maybe."

Days later the army comes through the village conscripting young men for war. The son, with his broken leg, is passed over.

"Such good luck," say the neighbours.

"Maybe," says the farmer.

The neighbours went to extremes. The farmer never did.

I didn't realize it, but I spent most of my life being the neighbour.

Jumping from one high to the next low.

Growing up I did a lot of acting. 

My mother was an actress which I'm sure influenced me. I had a dream of becoming a theatrical actor myself.

I ended up getting into a good theatre and film program in the US, and then somehow accidently landed a small role in a Paramount movie.

 — Without Limits — 

Portraying one of the runners in the Olympic final.

You wouldn't even know it was me if you weren't looking.

The funny thing is I didn't even audition. 

A casting agent took my photo while I accompanied my brother to his audition and somehow that was enough, I got the part.

I thought this was it. The beginning of everything.

But I remember what came after the filming ended.

Weeks on set, the excitement of it all.

Then silence.

The lights went dim. 

The excitement faded. 

And what surfaced in the silence was a sort of flatness, loneliness even, a low-grade worry I hadn't expected.

I'd felt it before with plays. 

Weeks of rehearsal, the buzz of performance, the spotlight. 

Then it's over. 

It was an extreme drop.

I started to see it everywhere.

In my work coaching Hollywood actors — same thing. 

The intensity of a project, the aliveness of it, then the drop. 

Olympic athletes too — their whole life pointed at one moment, then it passes, and the emptiness that follows when it's all over. 

The, “Now what?” 

Maybe that was it. As good as it gets. 

The doubt that follows is something nobody warns you about.

The crash is real. 

And it has nothing to do with whether you succeeded or failed.

If you look closely at your life you'll see it too.

The nervous system counter-balances extremes.

Swing too far one way and there's a mule kick to the opposite direction.

The higher the swing one way, the harder the pull back the other.

Glad to sad. Every time.

If you're not careful your life can be perpetually caught in this loop

This is why the middle path is one of the deepest Zen teachings there is. 

Thousands of years of watching human beings suffer, observing the patterns with extraordinary precision, distilling it down — from the ancient traditions of India, through Buddhism, refined further into Zen — until they arrived at something so simple it almost sounds as obvious as the farmer's reaction.

Don't chase the extremes.

The wisdom is thousands of years old. 

But most of us haven't been taught it.

The middle path isn't numbness or giving up on excitement.

Not at all.

You can feel all of it. The only difference is you don't rely on it or hold on to it. 

You let it move through you.

You don't make it the ultimate everything. 

As if this high will last forever. 

As if it will finally save you from where you feel stuck.

It won't. 

And reaching for it to do that is exactly what tips you over the edge.

The key is not to grasp. 

To experience it, breathe it in — but let it pass as easily as the exhale.

The Zen teachers knew this.

Don't let yourself go too far in either direction. 

Not because the extremes aren't real. But because they will always pull you back.

Here's the trap.

Each extreme is addictive.

Not just the highs. The lows too.

Unconsciously we become as attached to the familiarity of our suffering as we are to our excitement. 

Watch yourself closely.

When the high comes, your thoughts light up with it. They follow the feeling — ruminating about possibility, potential, how this time everything is going to be different.

Then the ripcord.

And just as quickly the thoughts follow the crash. 

The doubt creeps in. The negative stories sneak back. The mind matches the new emotional weather just as faithfully as it matched the last one.

It's a dangerous loop.

Extreme high to extreme low. Needing the next high to counter the low. Then finding yourself in the next low before you even saw it coming.

Around and around.

If you follow the swings long enough they become your only reference point for feeling alive. 

The centre stops feeling like peace and starts feeling like emptiness. 

So you need the next high just to feel normal. 

That's where people truly get stuck.

We get so lost in the push and pull we forget there's another way to live.

Don't let the mind take over here.

Don't let it tell you life will flatline without the extremes.

Let the full excitement of life come. Don't chase it, don't grip it, don't try to extend it. 

And when it passes, don't fight what follows. Let that pass too.

That's the middle path.

Not emptiness.  Not numbness.

A life where things move through you instead of taking you with them.

Because what you've been chasing in the highs — that aliveness, that feeling of being fully here — isn't in the extreme. It never was.

It's what's underneath all of it.

The solid state.

Not your thoughts. Not your emotions. Not the high or the low.

Just your presence. Clear. Steady. Already whole. Fully alive.

The emotions wash back and forth. The thoughts come.

And you don't flinch.

You remain.

The more you relax into that centre, the more you realise you were never missing anything.

You were just looking in the wrong direction.

Paul