Balance

03/07/2008

Once, when I was in high school, I found myself atop the Mt. Everest of bunny hills waiting to push off. I'd never been skiing before, a fact that I alone knew, but was sure to become public knowledge in the merest of moments. Delaying the obvious pain and humiliation that awaited me, I fidgeted while the onlookers congregated.

Let's see. I'm bolted to two slippery and abnormally long planks of wood. I'm carrying two poles that have pointy ends. My range of motion is decreased as a result of the 18 layers of clothing I'm wearing. There are obstacles everywhere... oh, and I'm going down that hill, with no brakes.

This could get ugly.

Like all other publicly available, life threatening, and inevitably embarrassing moments in my life, this had something to do with impressing a girl.

My senses heightened and fully aware of my impending doom, my posture took on an abnormally ridged frame. I looked over to discover a fellow skier, also waiting to push off. He stood a towering 36 inches tall. He glanced over, spotted my flawed stance, and taunted, "Ha! Good luck."

I can't quite remember the finer details of my response to his taunt. All I know is that it was rude and immediately after it was spoken, I realized that I was, in fact, trash-talking a child. This all started to concern me.

In a textbook case of self-preservation, I became delusional.

Delusion is a likable guy. He interjects himself into these situations effortlessly. He supplies us with an innate capacity to forget about the forces that counterbalance our otherwise superhuman abilities. He remains prone to arm us with his skewed perception, disproportionate outlook and flawed sense of space and time. He conveniently, and unequivocally, allocates confidence where there should be fear. Ego, where there should be humiliation. Miles, where there should only be inches.

At that moment, Delusion and I were good friends.

I pictured myself pushing off like the pros, drawing a smooth and curved line with my skis as I sauntered down the slope. The accumulated audience at the base of the hill energetically cheered in acknowledgement to what was sure to be the most skillfully executed downhill on an incline named after a woodland creature. How could it be any different? Delusion, ever the agreeable influence, looked back wearing his best "it could happen" face and concurred with my depiction by adjusting my rose colored goggles.

Adequately convinced and incorrectly inspired, I pushed off. A few seconds into my journey, a different reality hit me... literally. I did what is commonly called a face-plant. Yes, for the uninitiated, it has something to do with your face ending up in the snow and the other parts of your body cast to various imaginably painful and awkward poses. There's a fall involved, and it carries an indescribable ugliness that I'm sure you're adequately able to picture without my assistance.

I got up, dusted myself off and eagerly set up to make another attempt.

What was to follow can only be described as a series of increasingly humiliating falls likened to the one depicted above. For obvious reason, I have since blocked the details of such events from my memory and therefore unable to disclose the specifics at this particular moment. Let's just say I struggled to keep my balance in new and exciting ways that day.

Delusion, spotting his queue, abruptly left the scene to reveal my newly found stature of frigid humiliation. I was beaten, bruised and broken.

In an homage to perfect timing my trash-talking nemesis, Tiny Tim, effortlessly swayed to and fro down the slope in a perfectly proportionate ski line. As he passed, he said something beyond his years and equally beyond the realm of decency expected from someone of that age. I responded in-kind. I lowered myself (literally and figuratively) and attempted to trip him as he passed by. Okay, I'm not calling that the most mature moment in my life, but there you have it.

Several hours later, my skiing began to take on a new and determined look, and yet I remained unable to master the sport with any of my proceeding attempts. It would seem that my previous self-proclaimed mastery of balance had been called into question over a session of improper skiing.

It was ugly. The girl, of course, remained unimpressed.

I'm reminded of that day on the slops every time I find myself without balance (literally and figuratively).

Recently I decided to start my own company. Ironically enough, I found that having more control over my destiny, didn't offer more control over the balance in my life. In fact, quite the opposite occurred. As my workdays began to blur into the midnight hours, so too did the balance between personal and professional.

My days came to be measured in moments of productivity. Most of my lunch hours were scheduled work meetings. That way I could be sure to eat my first meal of the day (I don't eat breakfast) and get some work done at the same time. Hardly the embodiment of a balanced life.

Several overworked and sleep-deprived months later, I came to the conclusion that I couldn't maintain this kind of a lifestyle. I finally landed the dream job of all dream jobs, working for myself, and yet I couldn't convince my boss to let me take a day off.

Why was it so hard to balance work and play when I controlled all the strings?

My seemingly insignificant moment on the slopes that day demonstrated to me how illusive balance can be for some of us. It seems that even with the dominant prevalence of balance within our world, it can continually reminded us that there is complexity to be found in its obtainability.

Ever since we've been walking upright, the greatest amongst us have gained notoriety by exhibiting their unique familiarity with balance. Perhaps manifested in an equation, philosophy or high-wire act, it's continually sought after, yet rarely mastered and maintained.

When Einstein - a considerably more balanced person then me - was evaluating the forces of our universe something didn't add up. Although his math seemed to be right, it didn't correctly explain how the forces of the universe really balanced out. Frustrated, but undeterred, he did what all geniuses do in such situations, he invented a repulsive force which no one could see or explain but that adequately counterbalanced the force of gravity in outer space. Once he recalculated his equations using the newly invented Dark Energy, balance was restored in the universe. Although he himself called this his greatest mistake, today it is the commonly accepted theoretical force that accounts for the expansion of our universe (counterbalanced by Dark Matter). Way to go Einstein you're greatest failure balanced everything in the known universe and I get excited when I can balance my checkbook to the penny.

As we go through our lives, attempting to allocate the appropriate amount of weight on the scales we use to balance such things as work, play, love, happiness, and checkbooks, it is important to remember that unbalance is deceptively and continually tugging on it all. If we make the mistake of underestimating it there's a nice little maneuver called a face plant patiently waiting to bestow its effects upon us.

Shake it off.

Establish an equilibrium by applying the appropriate opposing force. Where there's selfishness, apply generosity; ignorance is to be proceeded by intelligence; procrastination begets productivity, stress is offset by just a moment of relaxation; negativity is leveraged away by positive thought and action; ego falls to humility and so on.

Observe. Measure. Balance.

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