"Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony."
- Author Unknown
In my previous entry, I spoke of exhaustion. In exhaustion we find tiredness and in tiredness we find misery. In misery, we find ourselves at the bottom of a hill looking up at the top of happiness. Realizing where we could be, we only find ourselves worse off because we have a comparison to the misery we are in.
This, at times, is the way that I feel. I have engulfed my life with so many activities that I have clouded the original intent of those activities. I have volunteered almost all of my time to reaching out to others. Key phrase in that last sentence is "all of my time". If I have put all my time into service for others, where has the time for myself gone? Where is the time to care for and nurture my soul?
Someone once told me that I need to learn how to juggle my activities and time. But that would mean that I would have one thing in my hand at a time and everything else would be thrown in the air until I tire of the thing in my hand and decide to discard it for later. I'd rather keep everything on one plane and balance it.
Here's the trick, let us not look at happiness as if it were on the top of a hill, but rather it is the fulcrum of our lives. If we were to put everything onto a circular plane, we could say that the happiness could be the center of our lives, but as my friend Nate pointed out, that would mean that we would be giving equal amounts of time and happiness to everything. Although that may seem appealing, it also means that we would be devoting the same amount of time to work as we would to family. Now, to me, that is not something that I would want to do. So rather, we can make happiness the fulcrum which gives us the ability to shift our happiness so that we can balance it out. Let us use the example of family and work. If family were on the left and work were on the right and we wanted to focus more time with family, then we can simply just shift the fulcrum towards the right so that we create more space on the left. If at any point we add more to a side that we have decided to lessened the space, the plane becomes tilted and everything on the opposite side falls down that proverbial slope of misery.
The only way to make this most effective is to evaluate all the parts that we want to have involved in our lives. For me personally, I cant just put family, work, and spirituality. I need to also include prayer time, reading, coffee shop time, and friends.
What do you have on your "plate"? Or should I say "plane"? Answer that question before you try to evaluate how to make your happiness the balance of your life.
2 comments:
before anyone says it, I want to apologize if it was confusing...
feel free to ask me to clarify it though. I might have a diagram of it soon so that it is a bit easier to understand
hey ryan! sorry for making the confusing comment, im sure Im just missing the point and really need to read it a little more carefully.
So far this is ive kinda got the idea happiness is not the goal of what we do rather the fulcrum which provides balance. which is all well and good but the part thats been confusing me is:
"make happiness the fulcrum which gives us the ability to shift our happiness so that we can balance it out"
now this part kinda doesnt make sense to me, cos your using happiness as the balance point, but at the same time this fulcrum is also shifting to balance out our happiness. So in other words my problem is, are we balancing out happiness, or is happiness the balance point??? (i cant imagine how happiness could be both these things)
However on another note, i like the idea that happiness shouldnt be put up on a pedestal, but i personally cant see happiness as being anything other than a goal to any activity. cos when i think about it, why do we work?? why do we play sport? why do we play music? why do we volunteer to help others?? Sure we could give several reasons, but ultimately isnt happiness at the core or the main goal of doing these things?? (sorry had to bring in some greek philosophy into this, not that im too sure where this originates, but im pretty sure aristotle had this idea either him or the stoics)
Anyway i agree that balance is important, and balancing out what we do so that we have time for our own happiness and so that our intentions are not lost in a flurry of activities. anyway a little clarity on the whole balance out vs balance point in regards to happiness would be greatly appreciated. otherwise i like the idea, but i think realistically happiness is more of a goal rather than something that provides balance.
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