|
|
Not BalancedBy Sandra Tayler
I frequently hear and read about people trying to achieve balance in their lives. When I think of balancing my life I picture myself attempting to carefully support all my kids and my housework and the business stuff and the writing and the wife stuff and the Sandra stuff and the religious stuff and dinners made and sleep and yardwork and bad mood days and... well you get the idea. Some of those things would be metaphorically sitting precariously on top of long poles. To keep everything balanced I have to stay very still. If I move, or if a single thing gets added or subtracted, everything will come crashing down. Balance is very static and very tense.
I don't want to live a balanced life, what I want is dynamic equilibrium. Dynamic equilibrium is like one of those metal novelty toys where all the bits are constantly moving and it looks like everything is going to fall apart at any time, yet somehow the whole thing keeps going and nothing falls. My life is like that. Things get added, things go away, but since I'm already moving around, shifting a little to accommodate isn't very hard at all. Dynamic equilibrium requires constant tinkering to make sure that things don't cause other things to fall out of place. Sometimes the whole system needs to be pulled apart and rebuilt from scratch. Sometimes rebuilding means I have to take pieces out completely to make space for other pieces. A major rebuild requires me to stop everything and take it all apart to adjust. Sitting on the floor amongst the pieces, I feel like a failure. I feel like putting it all back together again is impossible. I weep for the pieces I’d really like to have, but which I just can’t fit into they system without making things crash.
Dynamic equilibrium is far more stable than balance, but it is also more Chaotic. Often I just wish things would hold still for awhile. It feels like if things would just hold still I could manage everything. Thus comes the lure of balance.
What does this metaphor mean in practical application? It means that sometimes the dishes don't get done and I don't beat myself up about it because I know I'll catch them on the next pass through the kitchen. Sometimes the laundry piles up. Sometimes I don't make kids do chores. Sometimes I make the kids do more chores than usual. Sometimes homework doesn't happen. I'm allowed to have not so good days because sometimes I have amazingly effective days. Bad days are not the end of the world because the motion of the system inevitably swings me out of the bad day and into a better one. There are days when it all works and days where nothing does.
The secret of course is that in the midst of swinging chaos and balanced weights, the pivot point stays still. If I build the system right, then it will all work and I’ll have a quiet peaceful place in the center. Only the metal novelty toy that is my life, isn’t sitting safely on some shelf. It is down on the floor where the kids can monkey with it. Every single day something gets bent or knocked askew. As frustrating as it may be to fix a bumped dynamic system, it is much better to have a dynamic system bumped than a balanced one. Dynamic equilibrium TINGs and TWANGs as things collide, but balance goes CRASH.
Copyright 2007 Sandra Tayler All Rights Reserved |
| |
