The most important thing in life is balance, how is balance measured?

Last night we had an interesting discussion about the topic of balance in life.

My original thought was to address the work, family, personal time type juggling that a lot of people, especially women face these days.  However, Gerry thought the discussion was going to be about harmony, balance in art and nature. For Gerry, nature, good art are examples of good balance.  It is difficult to pinpoint but perhaps it is one of those things where we know when we see it. The problem here is that "balance" is used to describe almost everything natural and good to the point that we cannot figure out what balance is.

Mano thought that the word balance is now overused in oriental mysticism to describe something good without knowing or being nailed down to what it is.  Perhaps proportioning better describe the work life split we sometimes find so difficult to draw a line on.

Through the discussion,  it occurred to me that when people distress over work-life balance, they are actually trying to optimise or try to get the most they can in achieving career and personal success. The pursuit of the optimum or trying to maximize one's time or energy is always an inherently dangerous thing to do.  It implies that there is only a very narrow target that one would be satisfied which in turn means one will be disappointed most of the time.

This is all the more difficult due to the impossible task of trying to foretell the fruitfulness of one's investment in one's efforts towards work or personal life.

So claiming that there is a "balance" in the work-personal life compromise is really an illusion as this perfect balance can only be set with hindsight and often with regret of what "should have been done".

It is likely that through inevitable comparison with others at work and personal life situations we feel that we ought to do better in either or both of these area.  Not the hard nose compromising exercise as implied by the word "balance".  We want it all, not the compromise.

Bruce raise the idea of whether people like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela are "in balance" as they go through the difficult stages of their lives.  They seem to be above the social pressure that was forced on them and we do not think of them as someone who would wonder if their life is in balance.

This implies that it is clear vision of their goals and their attitude that help them fight off the crushing social pressure from the outside.

Perhaps it is clear goal and positive attitude that will get us out of this optimising, compromising regretting state, worrying whether we could have gotten more if we had just spent our time and energy in a wiser, better proportion. In grand causes like those for King and Mandela, the job is never done, any progress is good progress, so there is no regrets.

Mano object to comparison to figures like King and Mandela as that is just not how we live our lives.  It leads us to feel we are losers compared to these giants and that is not the case.  It is not the proper comparison bar.

While I agree with Mano on this, the interesting thing is that King and Mandela's jobs are never done while we tend to envision end goals for our careers and personal lives.  Regrets come from falling short of these goals.

Therefore,  while it is good to have targets to aim for, we should also be thankful for what we have achieved. To have contentment versus the nagging consciousness of tasks left undone and territories to conquer.

Maybe this is the "balance" we should be looking for when looking at our lives, the balance of contentment versus challenges to come.

There just is no simple answer is there?

While we were discussing balance, somehow we also talked about group dynamics in bullying. Gerry thought that besides the bully and the victim,  there is usually a rescuer.

Bruce said he learned from a seminar that there is usually the bully, the victim, and the bystander.  The bystander is actually helping the bully through inaction and the bully gets emboldened by this inaction.  Therefore the bystander's position is way more important than the bystander thinks.

All in all, an interesting evening discussion.