People talk a lot about striving for balance in different ways. Work and leisure time. Rest and activity. City and countryside. Development and protection. Nature and exploitation. Wet and dry. Sometimes we use words to cover these moments of balance: harmony, comfortable, regulated and similar words. Balance walks hand in hand with stability. When you at last reach the goal of getting that seesaw in balance, then you have to keep it in that horizontal position. The more stable you can hold that horizontal position, the better!
Do you remember how difficult it was to maintain a seesaw in balance when you were a kid? And even if you managed to do that, it was still so much more fun to disturb that balance and make the seesaw go up and down again. The fun part was not keeping the seesaw in balance; the fun part was feeling the tickle in your stomach when you got high up in the air and then went down again at high speed, and maybe you tried to slow the speed with your feet. Still, sometimes you went down so fast that you had to let the seesaw bump into the ground while you almost bounced off and had to hold on tight not to fall off. That was fun! That was great and wild!
Who is it that is trying to make us believe that the purpose of life is to find the balance? Who is it that wants us to sit there at the end of a seesaw without moving? As soon as we go into something with heart and soul, we risk losing control of our balance, and I believe that if we keep thinking about our goals in terms of balance, then we are bound to end up with an evil conscience, because there will always be something we do too much or not enough.
No, skip the balance! When are you at your best? What is it that you do when you feel that you are in a dance with yourself? When do you feel great and wild?
I don’t like the balance idea because it makes us picture an inner, unmoving seesaw, and when it moves, it only moves up and down. How fun is that in a longer perspective?
No, you’d better think about the symbol yin and yang. Think about life like a dualism with two active forces, and together they will move your life like a rolling ball. The forces create a dynamic that gives development. If you think that way, there will be no point in trying to maintain a stable balance. In this way, your life will gain meaning if you immerse yourself in activities, go into them with heart and soul, and then seek a way to fill yourself with new power.
The ball of your life rolls on. It tickles in your stomach, and sometimes it moves so fast that you feel wild, and then you get tired, like a child. You throw yourself to the grass and feel with every cell in your body how wonderful it is to lie there all drained out for a moment before you suddenly start to suck up energy from the ground with your entire body so that you become strong. Rest and activity, activity and rest – Yes! But not to get in balance, but to keep the ball of life rolling.
