Does Balance Exist?
A good point from Suzy Welch:
I actually hate the word “balance.” I think the term “work-life balance” suggests it’s possible to have a balance. 10-10-10 forces you to say not everything is equal, you have to make choices, and there are consequences to the decision you’re making. It helps you determine what your choices are so you can decide how to deploy your human capital.
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I don’t like the word balance either. To me it implies that if you just have a little of everything, you’re just fine–a little church, a little work, a little family time–just fit in a little of everything and you’re covering all your bases.
However, I don’t like the term human capital either.
I have pondered the mantra called “balance”. It is as elusive as the fountain of youth. In fact is is false when you examine the details, and life is lived at the level of details. Time is just one detail…minute by minute. Energy measured out in time is another detail, as diet is a detail. Balance is a term applied to escapist mysticism, not to important realities that face us and engage us and hound us each day. Given the flux and unpredictability of the world, not to mention its less than ideal state, balance is a mirage. It pretends to have found and captured the ideal.
The better and constant word is “tension”. Do you not feel that and see that from politics to pizza? Life is lived out in a tension, a tension between good and evil, temptations and responsibilties, waste and fruitfulness, time foolishly lost and time well-managed, conformity and discovery, war and peace, democrats and republicans, on and on.
Theologically, one can say we live between the now and the not yet of the kingdom. It is present and yet is is future, and we are moving towards a consummation. This is not ying and yang, but the old giving way to the new at all times. That can be a good thing where tradition is worth keeping, or a bad thing where tradition is a hindrance. There is decay or there is revitalization. That creates tension in all aspects, but not all felt the same way or at the same level.
By tension, I do not mean stress, in the popular sense. Not living wisely with tension, however, will create and compound stress to dangerous levels. It also can bring about great resolution and relief from stress. Tension wants to pull one way or the other along the same continuum. To ride it well means a third dimension in life is needed to oversee and contain it, guide it and serve the good.
Tension demands making and keeping priorities, and resisting intrusion by what is less permenant and less valuable. You have to say “no” to ordinary, temporary things often in order to say “yes” to the right things, though you may wish you could have it both ways. You feel its tension, internally and externally.
How to grasp this begins with a worldview, which in turn trickles down to your daily ways of value and management and relationship, setting priorities, choosing courageously and using energy. Then you have to fight the good fight to keep it.
The world does not exist finally in some circular pattern where we find the balance – that is the quest of utopianism. We rather live a linier pattern that progresses and develops and expands, which can hinder or help, depending upon others truths. In the end we become what we are, for good or ill.
In my mind, what lessens the tension so that we do not fear, or stumble needlessly, but can have confidence is where and how we seek change. It matters where we seek transformation and rest, where we seek the Source for faith, hope and love to abide that makes all the difference as to whether tension defeats us, or is a means to think, plan, build and create more fruitfully with goals to a good success.