People aim to find balance in their lives. They’d better hope they don’t succeed.
Maybe this quest for the ideal fixed point comes from an innate desire to be ‘perfect’. Maybe it comes from looking at others and only seeing the ‘reality’ that they choose to present to the world.
It’s not important which.
We look forward to an imaginary future where we settle, once and for all, into a never-changing routine where all the different parts of our lives co-exist in harmonious ratios.
There’s just one problem…
The concept of a perfect balanced life is a myth. It’s impossible. It doesn’t exist.
And this isn’t just because the ideal “balance” will be different for different people. Every single one of us should be dynamically and deliberately shifting positions all the time.
Part of that is just the way the world works. Reality doesn’t serve us up a set of unchanging days which form the ideal foundation for us to construct a balanced life upon. (And we’re fools if we believe we can shape things in a way that might allow us to get there someday)
But even if that were possible, we wouldn’t want it. Last time I checked we human beings are still part of nature. It’s not something we’re looking to overcome or transcend.
And nature is all about ebbs and flows. It changes on all timescales. From geological processes over tens of thousands of years. To the seasons that change every few months. Right down to how day follows night follows day.
A static ‘perfectly balanced’ earth would have the sun permanently down on the horizon. We’d live in a never changing half-light. How much less interesting is that than the constant dance between night and day?
Without the barrenness of winter you could never have the riot of new leaves and flowers in the spring.
This is not only about beauty and interestingness.
A free flowing stream stays pure and clear. A still pool stagnates.
If you’re hoping to someday reach a point of “balance” where nothing ever changes again then you’re intending to stagnate. To die.
You want to embrace this natural movement as you change and grow over years and decades. But it should also exist in your individual moments.
Where earthquakes are common, the buildings are designed to flex.
Structures that sway in response to external forces survive. Those which try to remain static achieve that aim for a brief moment… Then they’re destroyed.
A true master doesn’t hold fast rigidly to a single position even if a perfect neutral, central balance point exists.
Instead they read the tides. Go with the flow. And steer skilfully in response to the changing conditions.
They move fluidly back and forth as the situation demands.
Sometimes this takes them all the way to the extremes.
No-one wants to marvel at a ballerina achieving the impossible feat of remaining motionless in an unstable contorted position for as long as possible.
The beauty is in the grace of deliberate movements from pose to pose. In the choice of positions to string together.
And in the ongoing, never-ending motion itself.