Finding Balance: Are We THERE Yet?

We talk a lot these days about finding balance. 

But what does that even mean?

For some of us, it means we want to do less and be more.

Maybe we want to slow down, have more time with our families, and create more time for ourselves and our self-care.

Maybe we want to be both mentally and physically healthy.

Maybe we want to stop feeling so pulled between the competing demands of work and “life.”

Let’s take a moment to talk about balance. What does the word itself actually mean?

Balance:

{noun} a state of equilibrium or equipoise; mental steadiness, emotional stability; habit of calm behavior.

{verb} to bring to or hold in equilibrium; to arrange or adjust parts.

From the Latin bi-lancia {two metal pans, used as a scale}

It’s a noun AND a verb, for Pete’s sake! No wonder we struggle to find it! And it means so many things: it can also be a state of harmony, or what remains after an action happens, or the object that provides equilibrium, or the object used to measure if something is in balance in the first place.

Our ideas about balance, even the very word itself, imply a dichotomy. Two opposing forces, on either side of the scale.

But does the scale have to be in perfect, unmoving equilibrium? I’m pretty sure a “balanced diet” is not half healthy, half junk food.

For many of us, those two sides represent a battle between “want to” and “have to.” I want to spend a lot of money, but I have to save. I want to eat ice cream and cake, yet I have to eat veggies and whole grains and protein.

It gets even more complicated when it comes to work/life balance. Which one is the desire and which one is the obligation? If we’re lucky, they’re both fulfilling. They’re both want to’s. And sometimes they’re both have to’s. How do we balance two have-to’s? It’s not as simple as candy versus quinoa.

When the experts are asked about how we can achieve balance, they often tell us…

Balance is not perfect…

It’s constantly changing…

A lot of it is in our head…

It’s about living in the moment…

It’s about accepting “good enough.” 

Now we’re getting somewhere. Another word often associated with balance is poise {also derived from the word for “to weigh.”} Like balance, it means steadiness and stability, but it can also refer to suspense or wavering, as between rest and motion or two phases of motion.

Don’t you just love that? Poise not only means steadiness and composure, but it also refers to the liminal moment, the brief wavering between our movements. Poise is stability and transition. It is graceful motion.

Instead of seeking balance as a noun, a destination, or an achievement, we should be seeing it as a verb, an exercise, a dance.

Maybe that’s why our balance sometimes feels off. One day you may be a true yogi, demonstrating grace and ease in every pose. And then next day you hit dancer’s pose and the steadiness has vanished ~ your leg shakes, you veer left and right, your calf aches, your hands brush the mat, you fall down, you move into the pose again. And again. Which is the whole point of yoga. And life, really.

Author Judith Warner describes dancer’s pose as “a pull of opposing forces that keep you in balance.” It’s about dynamic tension and “power and grace,” not stasis. As still as we can become, there is always the movement of the breath and the molecules of the body. We’re always dancing.

This is echoed in Shawn Fink’s “Ten Motherhood Truths From Around the World,” in which she writes that though we seek a balanced life, we will rarely achieve it:

The truth is we are never going to have enough time for ourselves. The truth is there is no right way or wrong way to find and achieve balance …. In fact, there is only a constant effort, re-assessment and adjusting to find the right way to keep the balls of raising children, working, living, dreaming and housekeeping in the air without dropping a single thing. Balance is a journey, not a destination.” {emphasis added}

And I’ve been holding out on you! There’s another meaning of balance. In French, balance {pronounced in fancy French with three syllables, emphasis on the ending} is a dance move. A balance is performed by standing on both feet and gradually shifting one’s weight from leg to leg.

That is the balance we seek, the constant shifting and negotiating and adjusting.

Sometimes we need to throw ourselves into our job to meet a deadline or grade a big ‘ol stack of essays.

Sometimes we need to pursue our work or an interest with an intense and focused passion.

Sometimes we need to let the work go and spend a day playing games with the kids.

Sometimes we need to let family obligations go and get ourselves to the gym.

Sometimes we just need a nap.

Life is not a dichotomy. It’s not a zero sum game. Self, children, work, spouse, house, community… we can never reduce those to the neatly balanced equations of chemistry.

So we dance. We rest. We leap. We speed up. We slow down.

Sometimes the equations are simple.

Sometimes the equations are messy and lopsided.

But the last thing we need is the scale, the constant weighing and measuring, the inner voice repeatedly asking, “Am I balanced now? Am I balanced NOW?”

Or the voice from the backseat of our moving lives, “Are we there yet?”

Because the answer is always NO. We’ll never “arrive.”

But the answer is also always YES. We’re always here.

Dancing.

scale photo credit: hans s via photopin cc
dancer’s pose photo credit: FLASHFLOOD® via photopin cc