Balance

We heard a lot of this word in the year 2018, and not because of a sustainability conference that went viral, but because of the fifth highest grossing movie of all time, named Avengers: Infinity War. Today, let’s try to understand this facet of life and its applicability to our daily existence. One facet, that we all desire, but one that remains elusive, and even after attainment, remains difficult to maintain to say the least.

As I was referencing the source of the uptrend in the search of this word in 2018, Avengers: Infinity War had people buzzing about the word “balance”, and even more interestingly, left a very large percentage of the viewers impressed with the antagonist of the movie because of his philosophy of wanting to match the global population to the resources, instead of the other way around. This, in my mind, is quite a big testament for the world’s desire for balance.

I have never tried to tackle issues as large as the propensity of beings to commit mass genocide, but this did give me some food for thought; as to how important it is to maintain a balance in our daily lives as well. As intuitive as it sounds, evidently this is one aspect that has been slippery to the human grasp for a long while, dare I say just enough to let us survive so far.

Math, anyone?

Balance today, by the numbers

Globally, the self-help/self-improvement industry today is valued at $11.3 Billion, and is expected to be around $14 Billion by the year 2025. To balance this side of the see-saw, we should be able to see a comparable, if not equal, impact on people across the globe, right? Let’s see how are we as individuals doing physically and mentally as compared to the past.

Physically

• According to WHO, obesity worldwide has tripled since 1975
• 8.8% of the world lives with diabetes as of 2019, from 6.4% in 2010

Mentally

• Suicide is the fourth leading cause of deaths among young adults aging between 15 and 29.
• The number of people suffering from depression grew by 18.4% till 2015 (And we are living in a post-pandemic world, where terms like languishing, loneliness, social isolation have basically been commonplace)

Back to philosophy

We have now taken a look at numeric evidence as to how we are experiencing imbalance in our lives today (and also established for a fact that I know how to read and interpret numbers off the internet). Let’s get back to a more thought based orientation to complete this musing.

This (I hope) thought-provoking text we have been reading so far has to beg the question, what is it that we should do in order to maintain a balance in our lives? Is there a one-size-fits-all solution to this? As far as my understanding goes, I don’t think there is one. There are people across the globe who can maintain balance without it seeming like they are a quarter of an inch close to losing their crap, while there are others who, through no fault of their own, seem to be in shambles almost constantly.

I, myself have been facing a tremendous amount of stress maintaining a balance between the various facets of my own life (And this isn’t really a big deal, happens all the time, LOL). Don’t get me wrong, I had things under control for a majority of the past year, but the third quarter essentially went on auto-pilot.

There, however, seems a common themes arising in the former group of people, who seem to have their crap together almost constantly.

People, who appear to have everything “perfectly balanced” almost constantly, seem to have a clear understanding of what it is they want to balance between.

Simply said, they have their priorities straight.

The world today (digital or otherwise) is filled with distractions of all shapes and sizes. And these distractions are so camouflaged that even we cannot identify the non-linearity of these. For example (and this isn’t the only one out there, this was the one that struck to me as the most appropriate); There are I think as many promoters of minimalism out there today as there are detractors, who truly believe owning a lot of materialistic luxuries is a testament to achievement in life.

Does one way of living outweigh the other? I don’t know.

But what I have now come to realize is that being aware of what matters the most to YOU, the reader, will truly help you figure out a way to balance your life. And how do you identify what matters the most to you? I think a pen, a paper and some quiet time alone with your thoughts, together, are capable of doing a lot of wonders.

I think it would have been worthwhile that prior to attempting mass-genocide, trying to identify why this matters to you would have prevented you from turning to dust at the hands of mere mortals, Thanos.

If you stuck around this far, thank you for your time. If you enjoyed this, share this with one friend of yours whom you think will benefit from reading this. Thanks for reading, and I will see you in the next one.