The Art of Balance

Written by Elbisrever on September 3, 2009

Well, I placed a little blog under my painting, but why not make an actual blog about what I was trying to say? :P

So, what is the art of balance, at least to my eyes?

Everything in this life is finding a balance, or at least is trying to find a balance, with itself and everything around it. You can find this balance in pretty much anything ( examples are coming up). Something being in balance, however, is not always the case. Which is not a bad thing in it's own right, but when things get to much out of balance, something will crack eventually. To give a few examples:

- A simple one: Pick a balloon and start filling it with water. It's the force of water against the force of the balloon. As long as these two can compete, all is well. Should the water stop, the balloon will empty itself until it has found it balance. Obvious, you might think, but this is how it works. Should the water have kept filling the balloon, and get it extremely out of balance, it would have burst. And if the balloon would have been strong enough (which most balloons aren't ;) then it would have kept the water from flowing. This is just a material example, to make things simple, but it also works like this with other things.

- How does it work on humans? Well, haven't we all been angry, and kept those feelings to ourselfs? Just, let all the crap of life be fired at us and not really doing anything with it, with the exception of boiling it up inside of us.

We can choose either two things: let it out! And this can be in any way: shouting and screaming, jog for 10 miles, cry for hours or start writing things down. Just as long as you let yourself empty and find your own balance again. Should you choose not to empty, and keep boiling things up, then eventually you WILL burst. A person can only take so much... These kinds of people end up shooting schools or something; they are completly out of balance.

- The example I gave @ my painting: You can chose to be self-centred, grabbing all that you can hold on to and keep it for yourself. This is good for yourself in a way, although this will eventually lead to negative effects for those around you ( and for yourself, since people won't like that much)

You can also chose to be selfless, only think about others. People will benifit from it, but this can be negative for yourself in the end; you can only take care of others if you have taken care of yourself first!

- A last example, one on a large scale: Not to sound greeny, but we are literally ripping this world apart. Almost al organisms on this planet have found a way to adapt to their eviroment and thus creating a balance. The humans are an exception to this. We do not adapt to our enviroment, we let our eviroment adapt to us. We're draining all our rescourses, are constantly in conlfict, we have enough nuclear warnheads to destroy the face of the earth 13 times ( which is a fact). Our elders keep getting older because we're inventing new medicine all the time, which is a good thing you might think, but on the other hand this world is getting overpopulated. At some point, it either has to balance or it will crack...

So you see, this pattern can be found in everything, and by trying to see it in each situation what that is, we can do something to influence that situation for the benefit of both ourselfs and others. Don't always see anger as something negative. After all, we get angry at the ones we love BECAUSE we love them!

That's what it all boils down to: I think we should do the things that are best for ourselfs and our enviroment! And although we can not always see beyond our own choices, some others might just do, and that's what friends are for ;)