Life is About Balance

Summary

The website content argues that life is inherently about balance, where the full appreciation of the positive aspects comes from experiencing their opposites.

Abstract

The article titled "Life is About Balance" emphasizes the importance of experiencing both the positive and negative aspects of life to fully understand and appreciate them. It suggests that the desire for a one-sided, pleasure-only existence leads to a monotonous and unfulfilling life, as value is derived from the contrast between opposites, such as happiness and unhappiness. The author posits that embracing life's full spectrum, including pain, sorrow, and even the awareness of death, is crucial for a balanced and meaningful existence. This balance is what gives life its purpose and beauty, and rejecting the natural course of action with its highs and lows only leads to dissatisfaction.

Opinions

The author believes that a life devoid of negative experiences would be one-dimensional and lose its purpose.
It is expressed that the modern lifestyle, which often encourages the pursuit of constant happiness and enjoyment, is flawed because it denies the natural balance of life.
The article suggests that true happiness and gratitude can only be felt when contrasted with their opposites, such as unhappiness and hunger.
The author asserts that the awareness of death is an essential part of life's balance, and our attempts to ignore this universal truth are detrimental to our existence.
The article quotes Ellen DeGeneres to reinforce the idea that life's beauty lies in its balance of good and bad, highs and lows.

Black and white. Love and hate. Happiness and unhappiness.

Now notice that I didn’t use the word “or” because it is not a matter of black or white. It’s a matter of black and white because one can’t know the true value of something without knowing its exact opposite.

There is this balance mechanism inherent in life that enables us to experience it in its fullest but we are doing everything in our power to pick and choose only the good things in life. We don’t want to experience pain, sorrow, and the bad things that are inescapable in this life. Please just give me the good things that will bring me instantaneous pleasure. It’s as if we want life to present us with a menu that only has our favorite dishes so we can live a preordained life where only the things we want exists.

Let’s suppose that only “positive” things exist such as, love, happiness, pleasure, good health, etc. How would we know their true values’. How would we know that they are things that need to be sought after when their opposites don’t exist for us to assess their differences’.

This one dimensional world would lose its purpose and it would be monotonous. That’s how it is right now for a lot of us. As long as we choose only one side that this world has to offer, it will continue to be like that because this lifestyle creates an imbalance.

Life is full of different components. Black isn’t black without its white. Happiness isn’t happiness where unhappiness doesn’t exist. If everyone was happy all the time, how would we know what true happiness is? We wouldn’t.

The modern way of life is honing us towards one way. The “good” way, where life is nothing but full of enjoyment. This system wants us to reject everything that doesn’t serve this purpose. Just block those things, you don’t need them in life. And that’s where our dissatisfaction with our way of being resides.

We need a life of balance to truly experience it in its fullest instead of just consuming whatever gives us instant pleasure. We can’t be happy unless we experience unhappiness in our lives. We can’t truly be grateful for food if we never feel hungry.

We will feel displeased with our lives as long as we only choose one side that it has to offer. Life’s beauty has to do with its way of balancing out things. But we have to let it balance out our life. We need to embrace a mindset of accepting what it has to offer instead of trying to deny its natural course of action.

Life’s biggest tragedy is death and we know this from the moment we are born. The moment a mother gives birth, that baby’s fate is doomed with the kiss of death. We aren’t aware of this from day one but we come to its awareness as the years roll on. We’ve come to reject even this truth. This universal and unchangeable truth and we are acting like it doesn’t exist.

The reality that we are all going to die is why we are alive. Again, a system of balance. Life doesn’t exist without death. And death, serves no purpose if there is nobody alive.

“My point is, life is about balance. The good and the bad. The highs and the lows. The piña and the colada.” ― Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously… I’m Kidding