For many living in western societies, modernity brings with it the blight of busyness. Stress weighs us down; the onerous demands of studies, career and family can leave our bodies neglected and minds frazzled. Hives of self-help advice tend to underscore the importance of balance. Here, balance serves as a central metaphor for that harmonious point between extremes, a state of poise in which countervailing forces neutralize one another. In a balanced life, there is exertion and rest, work and leisure, seriousness and fun. This balance is thought to be the boon of health, both physical and mental. In reality, however, balance is elusive and rare. What balance we manage to strike is only ever transient, here one day and gone the next. Worse, the very idea of balance as something to strive for adds further weight to existing feelings of inadequacy: in addition to all the good things that I don’t have, I must now confront my failure to live a balanced life.
Through the course of our days, duty often totalizes thought and action. Efforts toward balance are hindered by responsibilities, many of them noble and worthwhile. Too often, balance feels like a zero-sum game — by taking time for myself, I am neglecting something or someone. Conversely, by suspending my needs to attend to somebody else, I am undermining my own wellness. As a metaphor, balance is predicated on the notion of compromise. A happy medium is only attained when each opposing side has relinquished something. In practice, people find it difficult to relinquish what feels important. We cannot easily neglect our work, families and friends, yet the requirements of self-care seem to demand just that. We are asked to give up a pound of one thing for a stone of another. Thus, the conundrum posed by balance becomes a source of vexation.
In the grip of this conundrum, the inertia lies in the incumbent state. Unable to initiate discernable change, we maintain the status quo. We submerge ourselves in work, or furl deeper into preoccupations that take us away from a balanced life. We prefer the disfunction of the familiar over the disruption of the unfamiliar. The price we pay for this fragmented life: erosion in relationships, deterioration of physical health, psychological dis-ease, inner despair.
Because balance is precarious and elusive, the metaphor itself flawed, the path forward lies in a revised understanding of balance a redefinition of our task. Balance is neither a state of equilibrium wherein all opposing forces are neutralized in equivalence, nor a state of affairs to be attained, managed and administered. Balance is better understood as a feature of discernment, a facet of awareness that is attuned to the movement of life, attentive to shifting frontiers of our being. There may never be a point of perfect balance, but there can always be a sensitivity to the forces that enter our sphere, an awareness that calibrates our commitments and adjusts our efforts. This discernment need not aim at a state of perfect equilibrium to prove itself worthwhile. Rather, it serves its purpose simply in its operation. If I recognize extremity and take measures to address the excess, then I am already returning to wholeness. In exercising this awareness, I am better able to register the demands on my time, their effects on my well-being, and how each demand squares with my deeper commitments and priorities. Thus, I can more effectively monitor my wellness, prevent the lapse into extremes, and maintain buoyancy amid the forces that menace my days.
To see balance as a quality of awareness rather than a state of absolute equilibrium affords me both space and generosity in light of my circumstances. There are seasons in our lives when the days are ponderous and dense. We may be in the throes of graduate school, crawling through a thesis inch by inch; we may be raising kids while maintaining a career. Despite our best intentions, the recurring messages that extol balance as a prize, a less demanding circumstance is simply not possible. In these instances, discernment serves as a guide that points to other avenues of relief. Discernment allows us to relinquish the burden of expectation, fear of losing control, adherence to perceived norms. Our days may be busy so long as we are deep in the season of labour, but we can find subtle ways to soften even as we toil, knowing that all seasons must pass, that the vigour of summer will also subside into the stillness of winter. Riding the current of life, we learn to move and engage without exasperation. We can let go of expectation and any preconception of how life should or should not be.
In other instances, extremity withers the soul and wears out the body. Punishing workloads, toxic work places, abusive relationships, and hardships of many kinds —emotional, physical, financial— can be insufferable. Abject pain crushes the spirit; misery breeds despair. Prolonged malaise indicates a fundamental misalignment in one’s life, whereby our deepest yearnings are at odds with our station. In such cases, awareness calls us to decipher the message that lies within suffering. The pain has something to show us — it invites us to honest reflection, to greater authenticity. These are occasions when incremental adjustments will not suffice. Meaningful transformation demands fundamental changes that usher in life’s reorientation. Such changes are painful and disruptive; they are seldomly undertaken voluntarily. It takes great courage and forcefulness of will to initiate such a change. Though powerless to initiate transformation, sometimes life sends storms that upend our existing orientation regardless of our wishes. These are bewildering periods of excruciating agony. They are also incubation periods that presage rebirth and new horizons of possibility.
When one is caught in the whip of the storm, survival is of utmost priority. Balance is neither relevant nor feasible. However, one can maintain a position of observational clarity, which is apt to witness the melee without asserting an agenda. With practice, we inhabit a spaciousness bigger than the storm. We may cry and scream or remain mute for weeks. However we brave the turmoil, we let awareness bear witness to this unfolding. Awareness, in this instance, holds no illusions about how we should feel, what we should do. Instead, there is a compassionate, non-judgemental attention that allows experience to roam where it might. In the throes of anguish, this tender spacious awareness may prove more healing than expectations of balance and equipoise.
The function of life’s storms (divorce, illness, bereavement) lies in the re-arrangement of elemental forces of life, thus paving the conditions for revitalization and regeneration. If the storm threatens to obliterate us, we must hang on. Every storm will feel like it is the end of us. Let go of all expectations of balance. Watch the melee. Recall Rilke’s question: “What is it like, this intensity of pain?” Let the anguish be an inquiry into mystery, a mystery that will take us out of our expired egos, outmoded patterns, crumbling artifices of self. Beyond the storm, the moon and stars remain placid in their places, waiting to reveal themselves after the squall.