Balanace?

Marli: "Is it human nature to always want something more?"

Unequivocally yes! I've thought about this quite I bit... I used to wonder why we humans were using up all the Earth's resources and endlessly competing. Wouldn't it be better if everyone were happy where they were and felt no desire to increase production or make more money or have a bigger house?

Now that I'm a little older, and I wonder what I am going to do with the next bit of my life, I see goals in my future, and I know why no one wants to live in a static world. The human spirit is rooted in competition, against oneself and against others. There's always a desire to achieve and move forward. Always a desire to do something new and interesting.

Balance? I think it's impossible to achieve perfection in any form (although I keep trying for it with certain projects). The best you can do is compromise, which is a balance, and be happy with the result. Or at least learn from it.

Part of moving beyond the safety phase of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is finding your footing in the world. Like balancing on a ball, but being stable enough not to fall off when the world throws something at you. I don't know how this relates to the temporal balance you mention about being both able to live on an island and enjoy it, but it's what I think of as balance in life.

There are people who live in VW vans and live on noodles and live to climb or surf or whatever. They've given up everything in their lives to pursuing one activity to it's fullest. Do they lead balanced lives? If they are happy and are able to deal with what the world throws them, then arguably yes. (As long as they have safety.)

If you are so single mindedly driven toward a goal that you neglect everything else in your life (drug addiction, working 80 hr weeks even when there is no firm near term deadline), do you have balance? It's like balancing a hockey stick upright on your hand (or like a control system for an inverted pendulum). If you make slow careful and considered movements, you can walk or even run and still keep the hockey stick from falling. If you move too fast or lose your concentration, then the hockey stick will fall over and you'll have to stop to pick it up.

In general, I think having balance and happiness is avoiding looking for the greener grass, or at least carefully considering why the grass is greener. Obviously there are times when a change simply has to be made though. Perhaps because your hockey stick keeps falling over.

This started as a comment to Marli's blog and got a little out of hand. I hope it has some relevance to what Marli was trying to say.