The Spiritual Wisdom of Weebles
Learning to Wobble Our Way Back to Center
If you grew up in the 1970s or ’80s, you may remember Weebles—those little egg-shaped toys with the wonderfully memorable slogan: “Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.” You could push them, bump them, send them rocking wildly from side to side, but somehow they always found their way back to center. I’m beginning to think Weebles understood something about the spiritual life.
Finding our center doesn’t mean we stop wobbling. Life will see to that. We will be disappointed, frightened, confused, caught off guard. There will be losses we never anticipated and questions we cannot answer. Finding our center simply means that somewhere beneath all that movement there is a deeper place to which we can return—a place of groundedness, belonging, and trust.
The further we wander from that center, the more we begin to close ourselves off. Our world grows smaller. We become guarded, watchful, and increasingly alert to whatever might threaten us. Uncertainty begins to feel like danger. Life itself can become something we feel we must defend ourselves against.
But when we return to our center, something softens. We remember that we belong—to ourselves, to one another, to this astonishing life, perhaps even to something larger than we can name. From that deeper place of belonging, we begin to loosen our grip. We don’t have to be quite so vigilant. We don’t have to anticipate every possible disaster. We can breathe again.
And when fear loosens its hold, even a little, possibilities begin to appear that we could not see before.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would feel like if I didn’t have to protect so much. What if I could move through the world with my hands a little more open and my heart a little less guarded? How would I live differently? What might I notice? Who might I become?
What would it feel like to be just 25% less afraid of all the what-ifs and worst-case scenarios my mind is so remarkably talented at producing? Twenty-five percent. That alone sounds rather wonderful. But what about 50%? Oh my.
Perhaps that’s the invitation: not to become people who never wobble, but people who know how to come home to center. Turns out my children’s childhood toys may have understood spirituality better than I did.
