How's Life on Your Balance Beam?
Jane Hunter, Human Development Specialist
The balance beam is the best analogy I can make to the lives we live today. The key word is balance. The beam is straight and solid. But our balance, as we perform our daily routine, is influenced by so many factors. Our health and inner well-being, distractions to directions shouted from the crowds around us and directions shouted from the coach close to our side determine how well the routine is conducted and how well we recover from the distractions that may upset our balance.
Linda and Richard Eyre, authors of Lifebalance, say "We live in the first time and place in the world’s history and geography where our challenges stem not from scarcity but from surplus, not from oppression but from options, and not from absence but from abundance. Instead of struggling to find our next meal, we are struggling to get our busy families together long enough to eat a meal. Instead of fighting for freedom to make our choices, we are reeling in the complexity of eighty-three TV channels, tens of thousands of consumer items, and almost limitless numbers of education, job, and life-style alternatives. It’s not the sparse simplicity of too little but the crowded complexity of too much that plagues our lives. And the answers lie not in the balance of our abilities but in our ability to balance."
The balance beam routine, just as for the gymnast, requires tremendous practice, preparation, concentration, and focus. Without this focus the routine is practically impossible to achieve and yet if we took a survey, I believe achieving focus would be listed as one of the most difficult aspects of achieving lifebalance.
The Eyres, parents of eight children found themselves in a scheduling nightmare. Linda decided one day to "do nothing and sit there for awhile." Focusing for a few minutes she realized "basketball season would soon be over; I might be able to entice some music teachers to come to our home if I paid a little extra; I could permit one small child (who wasn’t enjoying it anyway) to quit piano; I could organize a car pool for some lessons; and Richard should be driving the boys to basketball. Although there were times when I still felt harried-just those few minutes of thought were like a life-jacket being tossed to a drowning person, and I survived!"
Finding focus and balance in our lives will offer moments of reassurance we are on the right track or of reassessment of how things are going and could possibly be changed.
The Missing Piece | Educational Opportunities | Article Archive
 |
Nancy Flood, floodn@missouri.edu Consumer & Family Economics Specialist Putnam County University Outreach and Extension Center Last Update: May 23, 2001 |