windstorms and logjams

Balance is anything but stable.

I gave a talk in November and covered balance in it. While I was preparing for that talk I was stuck by how many of us are constantly pursuing balance. Life/work balance is a big one (really, the only one when you think about it). How do we balance our children and our career? How do we balance raising young children while caring for our aging parents? How do you keep your marriage alive when your spouse is your business partner? How do we stay personally connected in an ever more disconnected world?

So many people are looking for that sweet spot where everything falls into place nicely.

Perfect Balance Cannot be Sustained

Yeah, I said it (well, wrote it). Perfect Balance, and all that implies, exists only for a moment.

Think about what balance is in terms of your physical body. I want you to imagine a teeter-totter (see-saw) in a children's playground. Odds are you, or your kids, have tried to balance on top of a teeter-totter at some point in time. Invariably, you must keep moving, right? Right?…

Seriously, stand up right now and spread your feet shoulder width apart – imagine you are in the center of a teeter-totter. Now start slightly bending your knees and shifting your weight from side to side…feel that? That constant movement and redistribution of your weight…

…That's balance.

Balance is the means, not the end

We've all been led to believe that balance is the goal. And worse, that balance means standing still. I get that, after all, it would be amazing to finally achieve balance and then sit quietly in that achievement for a time.  But, if balance is like a teeter-totter, what happens when we stop moving? We fall off or have to move quickly from side to side to regain our balance.

It seems to me that balance is about  small, incremental movements we make to stay in the right place, the sweet spot, if you will. Stop moving and your balance will falter.

Sometimes we work too much, sometimes we play too much. That's ok. As long as, in the long run, there is a balance, you're doing alright. I might work like a mad person leading up to a holiday and then not work at all for an entire week. Both those things skew my attention in extreme directions, yet balance each other out.

In a perfect world, our moves from the center would be small and controlled. But my world is far from perfect and I'm often forced far enough to one side of the teeter-totter that I must walk uphill to reach a balancing point again. So what? Who cares? It happens. That uphill battle or redistribution of weight is part of the process, a part that reminds me how important that middle ground is, and the challenges I face in maintaining it.

Windstorms and Logjams

Life is all about windstorms and logjams. Sometimes the wind picks up and everything gets blown away or out of place. And other times the logs all pile up and need to be removed before things can move normally again.

Those are the extremes of life, the times we work too hard or play too hard. Our priorities get skewed, our attention pulled in a new direction. We get overwhelmed by the windstorms and logjams, often searching for ways around them, rather than through them. But going around our barriers merely means we have to deal with them later - why not try to blast them to pieces instead, completely taking them out of the equation?

This last week of the year brings reflection to many. I'm no different. As I look back on 2011 in its entirety, and measure my successes, I really only need to look in one place. Did I stay on top of the teeter-totter for most of the year? Did I fall and get back up? Did I move too far in one direction and stay there? Or did I find my way back to center?

Only you know what measures your success.

Those windstorms and logjams are part of it all – ride them out, clean up after them, and keep moving.

Keep moving into balance.