Balance is everything

When I am cobbling together a post that falls beneath the umbrella of “self-development” or “life”, I frequently find myself including the word ‘Balance’ somewhere in said post. Maybe I’m exploring ways to have a balanced life, or perhaps I’m making a point then presenting the counter point in order to maintain – yep, you guessed it – a balance. After all, an actual legitimate discussion has little (if not zero) credibility if it is entirely biased with no tolerance for opposing points.

Balance has to be applied to everything in life if you wish to live it well. The Yin and Yang symbol might be a cliche to wheel out these days but it really does symbolise Balance better than anything else. It depicts two opposites in perfect harmony.

To me, it also illustrates that you can’t have black without white; light without dark. And, to take it further, good without evil. This last one can be a particularly thorny discussion because there are millions of people in the world who believe that our ultimate goal, as a species, should be world peace – a world without war, hatred or division. It’s undeniably a good goal – a noble goal – to aim for as a race but it’s ultimately a flawed goal that will never be achieved for the simple reason that it is impossible to fully eradicate evil, just as it would impossible to cleanse the planet of good.

After all, if one “side” were to fully dominate the planet then its very identity would cease to exist due to the fact that the nature of good cannot be defined without the existence of evil as a comparison and vice versa.

Dark versus Light

More importantly, we ALL have good and bad within us, as uncomfortable as that may be for some of us to come to terms with. Nobody is a 100% saintly individual. The bad parts of said people may be buried deeply and they may rarely surface but they ARE there, just as even the most callous and evil amongst us will have some goodness somewhere, even if you may never see it. Take the London Bridge attack that occured last year (2019), for example. One of the heroes who attempted to stop Usman Khan was in fact the convicted murderer, Steve Gallant, who was serving a sentence for his part in bludgeoning, kicking and punching another man to death. Before the bridge incident, many would have looked at a man like Gallant and branded him as an irredeemable individual who should be locked away forever and not given a second chance. Now, I’m in no way excusing Gallant’s crime or trying to say that he “balanced the books” (no pun intended) for his part in stopping Usman Khan, but his actions last year show that we, as humans, aren’t simply either black or white; good or bad; light or dark.

“I saw injured people.

“Khan was stood in the foyer with two large knives in his hands.

“He was a clear danger to all, so I didn’t hesitate.”

It’s my personal view that it is healthy to be aware of our dark sides and to acknowledge them, while we are striving to be better people. Suppression or denial doesn’t solve anything. Accepting that we have these bad urges, selfish desires and perverse fantasies is the way forward. Understand and manage them because that balance needs to exist. Anybody who believes that they are a whiter than white and above it all are probably full of bullshit. It brings to mind one of my favourite snippets of philosophy from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

Where the light is brightest, the shadows are deepest

It’s better to be honest. This can be difficult in a society where saying the wrong thing or making a controversial admission can make you an outsider or even land you in prison. However, you can at least be honest with yourself, in your own mind. If an unsavoury thought or dark idea pops into your mind, don’t think, “why did I just think that?!? That’s not who I am! I’m such a terrible person!” It’s better to simply be aware of the thought, acknowledge its existence and allow it to drift away of its own accord. You are a human being. You are a flawed, imperfect creature and, as such, you will have dark thoughts from time to time.

It’s acting upon bad notions and violating another person’s rights that is the real problem. There are many, many reasons why some people cross this line or believe it to be acceptable but I’m no psychologist or expert so I’m not going to delve any deeper into these reasons. All I will return to are the acts of suppression and denial. It’s my belief that denying thoughts only makes the individual more curious about them. Further, suppressing a thought draws greater attention to it because you must be consciously focusing on them in order to force them to the dark recesses of your brain. This is why letting them breathe and float about innocuously in your head is a good thing to do.

The Scales of Balance

Away from the heavy, existential exploration of Balance, we can all benefit from looking at our everyday lives and identifying areas that are not balanced. You’ve probably heard of the phrases, “Everything in moderation” or “Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.” These nuggets of philosophy are thrown around all the time but they are on-point. Most things are perfectly harmless when they are consumed or enjoyed in moderation, and that includes items that are widely considered to be harmful or “bad”. Drugs, alcohol, pornography, sex, videogames, junk food…all of these things are okay if they are enjoyed as part of a balanced lifestyle.

Unfortunately, a lot of us get a taste of some of these vices and throw control out of the window, indulging excessively until we are slaves to what we consume. There is a self-control epidemic in our society and it has resulted in millions of people eating themselves into obesity or watching so much extreme porn that their perception of women and sex becomes dangerously warped. In both cases, there is a major imbalance involved and it can destroy lives as well as those of others close to the person.

Worse still, it paves the way for pleasures being considered problems. Authority steps in, bans or censorship are introduced and a whole bunch of other problems then emerge as a result.

I like to think of Balance as a set of scales. Any pleasure that we put on the scale – alcohol, unhealthy takeaway dinners, blowjob compilation videos on Pornhub – has its own unique weight. To get that healthy balance in your life, you must place an equal amount of weight on the other side of the scale. The problem is that we tend to have to do more work on the other side of the scale in order to make it balance and most of us simply aren’t prepared to do it. For example, a quick Google search reveals that it will take approximately twenty-five minutes of non-stop, moderate effort freestyle laps of a swimming pool to burn off a single Mars Bar. Most of us probably aren’t aware of this seemingly ridiculous price to pay for enjoying a quick treat. That two minutes of eating weighs a lot on the Scales of Balance, though, so it means that the other scale needs to be absolutely fucking loaded with effort in order to maintain that healthy balance on the dietry front.

It’s the same with everything. Going out on the town for a big night out involving a load of drinks is fine but do it too frequently and your life will be affected by the growing imbalance. I don’t see anything wrong with watching pornography now and again but if it gets to a point where you are binging on it every single day then there is a problem and it WILL damage your mind.

Look, I’m not making this post in order to tell people what to do or how they should live their lives. Nobody likes a preacher after all, and if there’s one thing I cannot stand, it’s people telling me what to do or how to live my life. This is just my interpretation of Balance. I believe that it’s important to get to grips with and utterly essential if you want to get the most of out of life in the long term.

Imbalances inevitably come with consequences regardless of whether you agree with my views or think that I’m talking a load of old bollocks. You always reap what you sow in the end, after all.