proportionate....................

 

"Our rewards in life will always be in direct proportion to our contribution."  This is the law that stands as the supporting structure of all economics and of our personal well being. . . .

Most people concentrate on the bowl marked "Rewards."  That is, they want things—more money, a better home, education for the kids, travel, retirement and so on—all rewards.  They're hungering for the rewards, but the rewards aren't materializing because they're forgetting the bowl marked "Contributions."  In other words, they're concentrating on the wrong bowl.  They're like the man who sat in front of the stove and said, "Give me heat, and then I'll give you wood."  He could sit there until he froze to death.  Stoves don't work that way, and neither does life or economics.

-Earl Nightingale

a balancing act..................

 

Loving others requires knowing how to say “yes.”

Loving yourself requires knowing when to say “no.”

-Mark Manson

balance......................

 

     Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth, and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself, but falsehood; . . . How wearisome the grammarian, the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, or indeed any possessed mortal whose balance is lost by the exaggeration of a single  topic.  It is incipient insanity.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from this essay

On ecological...................................

 

.................................balancing acts.

It is not called Boyle's Guideline...

 There’s no such thing as work life balance. There’s simply life. And you spend part of your life at work.

-Seth Godin offers more here

Hope for our political future.........?

 Carl Jung had a theory called enantiodromia.  It's the idea that an excess of something gives rise to its opposite.

-Morgan Housel, Same as Ever

balancing......................

 It may be wise to question whether we should always be living in the moment and whether this is the best way to foster creative thinking. Finding this ‘middle way’ between mindfulness and mind wandering can help us enjoy the optimal benefits of both ways of thinking. Mindfulness helps us truly see what’s around us—a skill of paramount importance in life and art—but it must be balanced with giving the mind space to dream, fantasize, and simply roam free.

-as cut and pasted from here

Keeping your...................................

 ...........................................balance.

Balanced...................................

      A certain amount of arbitrary rule-ness must be tolerated—or welcomed, depending on your point of view—to keep the world and its inhabitants together.  A certain amount of creativity and rebellion must be tolerated—or welcomed, depending on your point of view—to maintain the process of regeneration.  Every rule was once a creative act, breaking other rules.  Every creative act, genuine in its creativity, is likely to transform itself, with time, into a useful rule.  It is the living interaction between social institutions and creative achievement that keeps the world balanced on the narrow line between too much order and too much chaos.  This is a terrible conundrum, a true existential burden.  We must support and value the past, and we need to do that with an attitude of gratitude and respect.  At the same time, however, we must keep our eyes open—we, the visionary living—and repair the ancient mechanisms that stabilize and support us when we falter.  Thus, we need to bear the paradox that is involved in simultaneously respecting the walls that keep us safe and allowing in enough of what is new and changing so that our institutions remain alive and healthy.  The very world depends for its stability and its dynamism on the subsuming of all our endeavors under the perfection—the sacredness—of that dual ability.

      Do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement.

-Jordan B. Peterson,  Beyond Order:  12 More Rules For Life

Life in the balance....................

The Taoists revered water because they saw it as a symbol of humility and service.  Water nurtures and sustains all living things, and yet it seeks nothing for itself—it always flows to the lowest place.
     So, be like water, be humble, nurture yourself and others.  And stay at the back, where you are free to slip in and out of life's situations unnoticed and unencumbered.  That is the watercourse way.
     You don't need razzmatazz and glamour.  That only serves to create emotional weight in your life, pumping the ego into a false sense of importance.  Too much hype and attention, and the ego becomes a spoiled brat, and impossible to control.  It will soon drag you away from the Tao, from what is natural and good.  Trash that nonsense before it makes you sick.  You don't need it.  All you need is balance—and the contentment, creativity, love, and comprehension that flows from that.

-Stuart Wilde, Infinite Self:  33 Steps to Reclaiming Your Inner Power

Balancing act...................

     The idea of balance is exactly that—an idea.  In philosophy "the golden mean" is the moderate middle between two polar extremes, a concept used to describe a place between two positions that is more desirable than one state or the other.  This is a grand idea, but not a very practical one.  Idealistic, but not realistic.  Balance doesn't exist.

     This is tough to conceive, much less believe, mainly because one of the most frequent laments is "I need more balance,"  a common mantra fro what's missing in most lives.  We hear about balance so much we automatically assume it's exactly what we should be seeking.  It's not.  Purpose, meaning, significance—these are what make a successful life.  Seek them and you will most certainly live your life out of balance, criss-crossing an invisible middle line as you pursue your priorities.  The act of living a full life by giving time to what matters is a balancing act.  Extraordinary results require focused attention and time.  Time on one thing means time away from another.  This makes balance impossible.

-Gary Keller,  The One Thing:  The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

the grace needed...................

Value is, at bottom, simple.  The balance of values is complex, and how to trade them, to choose the worthiest course, is the problem of how to live.  Life has its absurdities, which we might expect and find humor in.  As for the meaning of life itself, in human history, we have yet to formulate an answer.  But we have found good enough reasons to potentially find meaning in our own situation, enough so as to find personal peace.  We needn't resign from life or withdraw, but can instead ready ourselves for being ever more attuned, in faithful practice.  For the basic joy in the surfer's kind of relational connection, even in an ordinary surf, is a real basis for peace in the sublime mix of the beautiful and the grotesque, of the fortunate and the unfortunate, of the just and the unjust.   One can relax the perfectionist scruples, ease up on the angst, and be less anxious.  One can get stoked and simple engage in worthy activities that give one the grace needed to call the present good enough within a life that's being well lived.

-Aaron James,  Surfing With Sartre:  An Aquatic Inquiry Into A Life Of Meaning

What a country....................................

     Madison's genius was to understand that the best bulwark against tyranny was not virtue—virtue helps, but should never be relied upon—but ambition countering ambition, faction countering faction.
      You see it even in the confirmation process for Neil Gorsuch, Trump's supremely qualified and measured Supreme Court nominee.  He's a slam dunk, yet some factions have scraped together a campaign to block him.  Their ads are plaintive and pathetic.  Yet I find them warmly reassuring.  What a country—where even the vacuous have a voice.
      The anti-Trump opposition flatters itself as "the resistance."  As if this is Vichy France.  It's not.  It's 21st-century America.  And the good news is that the checks and balances are working just fine.

-Charles Krauthammer, from his 3/24/17 essay found in this book

Wisdom.................................

     Intelligence is just as essential a part of the Christian message as is love.  God is love, but God is also infinite intelligence, and unless these two qualities are balanced in our lives, we do not get wisdom;  for wisdom is the perfect blending of intelligence and love.  Love without intelligence may do much undesigned harm—the spoiled child is a case in point—and intelligence without love may ultimate in clever cruelty.  All true Christian activity will express wisdom, for zeal without discretion is proverbially mischievous.

=Emmet Fox,  The Sermon On The Mount:  The Key To Success In Life

No wonder discipline is so difficult.............

     Discipline has been defined as a system of techniques of dealing constructively with the pain of problem-solving—instead of avoiding that pain—in such a way that all of life's problems can be solved.  Four basic techniques have been distinguished and elaborated:  delaying gratification, assumption of responsibility, dedication to the truth or reality, and balancing.  Discipline is a system of techniques, because these techniques are very much interrelated.  In a single act one may utilize two, three or even all of the techniques at the same time and in such a way that they be distinguishable from each other.  The strength, energy and willingness to use these techniques are provided by love . . .

-M. Scott Peck,  The Road Less Traveled

On balance............................

"Life is like riding a bicycle.  To keep your balance you must keep moving."

-a loose translation of Albert Einstein's  “Beim Menschen ist es wie beim Velo. Nur wenn er faehrt, kann er bequem die Balance halten.”

Except the essential..................

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comforts of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things -air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” 

-Cesare Pavese

a Utopian yearning............

     The spirit of speculation is anarchic, irreverent, and antihierarchic.  It loves freedom, detests cant, and abhors restrictions.  From the tulip Colleges of the seventeenth century to the Internet investment clubs of the late twentieth century, speculation has established itself as the most demotic of economic activities.  Although profoundly secular, speculation is not simply about greed.  The essence of speculation remains a Utopian yearning for freedom and equality which counterbalances the drab rationalistic materialism of the modern economic system with its inevitable inequalities of wealth.  Throughout its many manifestations, the speculative mania has always been, and remains to this day, the Carnival of Capitalism, a "Feast of Fools."

-Edward Chancellor, Devil Take The Hindmost:  A History Of Financial Speculation

As commencement addresses go...................

............................................................this one was mighty fine:

We all believe that the system of checks and balances is a good idea for a well-functioning and prudent government. But where are the checks and balances in our own thinking — the check that whispers, “You could be wrong”; the balance that suggests, “There’s another way of thinking about it”?

thanks Kurt

The delicate, but all important, balance.....