Skip to main content

Balance

At one time in my life, I embraced opportunities of all kinds as they came. I said "Yes" to all manner of offers to serve, socialize, or simply listen. Then came the pain. I found that being a Yes-man was self-destructive. I lacked boundaries, and began to suffer as a result. After recovering from a resulting physical sickness, I compensated for my mistakes by being firm and straightforward with others about whether or not I would be apart of something. Aside perhaps from family events, this meant that I chose to say "no" as often as I once said "yes."

I was proud of myself for it, for a time. Then, I began to realize that saying no too often could be just as harmful as saying yes too often. While saying yes too often meant being present to the point of exhaustion, saying no too often involved isolating oneself to the point of loneliness. Neither was healthy.

Both were examples of a fear I held. In both cases, I feared asserting my preferences with others. When I said yes, I chose to please others by agreeing to their needs or wants. When I said no, I chose to bypass altogether the conflict of having to choose between my own preferences and the preferences of others. By making "no" an automatic response, regardless of my actual desires, I had no need to recognize what I actually wanted because I had closed myself off to the opportunity. At least when I said yes automatically, I opened myself to opportunities in social or service gatherings to practice asserting myself, or to recognize my preferences in relation to others. When I said no, however, I denied myself the chance to experience anything.

I believe that a lack of balance is a sign that something else is wrong, something not easily recognizable, even to the person out of balance. I can testify that this was and is true for me. Just as certainly, though, a restoration of balance--in the form of recognizing and responding to one's needs and wants--is a sign of improved health. One's outward life is a reflection of what is happening within. It is one gauge for how well you are.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Nice Guy Fallacy

I read part of a poem recently by one of my favorite poets. It reads: I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage The linnet born within the cage That never knew the summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time Unfetter'd by the sense of crime To whom a conscience never wakes. Nor what may call itself as bles't The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall I feel it, when I sorrow most 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. At base, Tennyson contrasted a life of risk, and consequent pain, with one of security. He sides conclusively with the life of risk, and says he fails to envy those who have faced no hardship. I agree with him; and, for good or ill, his words are just as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Like then, there are those today who choose to live their lives with as little risk as...

Persuasion

At different points in history, governments have devoted men, women, and resources to try to persuade others to their side. One significant example of this occurred in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Hitler knew how important it was to make sure the German people were on his side as leader of the country. One way he did this was by controlling what people heard. Specifically, near the beginning of World War II, Hitler made it a crime for anyone in Germany to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. These were called the “extraordinary radio measures.” He did this to ensure that Germans weren’t being persuaded by enemy countries to question their loyalty to Hitler. He knew that a German listening to a radio broadcast from Britain might persuade that German to believe that Great Britain was the good guy and Hitler the bad guy. This was so important, in fact, that two people in Germany were actually executed because they had either listened to or planned to listen to a foreign radio broadcast (one...

Experiment

My social studies students and I are studying Islam right now. The other day, we were reading about one of the Five Pillars, zakat (charity in Islam that means "that which purifies"). Muslims believe that giving away money helps to purify it and also "safeguards [them] against miserliness" (1). I asked the class if this was true, that giving money away makes us less greedy. They generally agreed that it does. I wanted to test whether or not they really believed this, so I handed a volunteer a $10 bill. I told the class that I would ask for the bill back the next day. I said that they should pass the bill around among their classmates, and that as a result, there would be no way for me to know who had the bill. For that reason, whoever wanted to keep the money could keep it. Even if I did learn who kept it, I told them, I would not punish that person. I wanted them to be motivated by their own honesty. The next day, I asked for the bill, and a student handed it to me...