Balance

Simplicity. Want. Need. Excess. We need to find balance and once found maintain that balance. Picture if you will a plank resting on a ball and you are standing on the plank. As you balance there things drift by you some fast some slow. These things are our desires, promotions, money, time with family, time to our selves, vacation new gadgets all of it just floating on by as we balance. Now some of it is close by and we can, with our much risk of tipping over, reach out and grab it. Other items are way out there and we must reach out far beyond what is comfortable in order to get our hands on them. And sometimes we reach too far and go tumbling off our ball, we buy more then we should and wind up losing what we had or we devote to much time to friends and create distance within our family.

The key to finding and maintain balance is learning when enough is enough. Like little children left alone with a bag of candy we are prone to gorge ourselves until we are sick. As we grow older we learn how to listen to our bodies, we learn what full feels like and that stopping when we are full is better than feeling sick for the next four hours. We need to learn to do the same thing with every aspect of our lives. Let me be clear here: finding balance is not about putting an end to want but rather to wanting reasonably.

A reasonable want is one that it is in our power to satisfy, perhaps not immediately but realistically without sacrificing things that are precious to us. However even reasonable wants will extend us away from center, from balance. When we move closer to something we desire we move away from other ways of filling the desire. As with all other areas of personal growth knowing yourself, knowing what you want and knowing what it is in your power to achieve is important. Personal honesty is the key to this. If we allow ourselves to know what we want and what we value staying balanced is easy.

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