(A)Life in Balance

Sometimes we hear the old generation saying that nowadays everyone is fragile and not resilient. – And indeed our bodies turned out to be mortal! For generations we pushed it further and further. Past generations had something to fight for. They fought for better life standards, equal rights, against war and so much more. Aims always kept us going and pushed us to our limits. Weakness hasn’t been allowed. Instead we concentrated on becoming stronger and stronger.

We need to question if this is realistic?!

And what motivates us nowadays?!

Unfortunately resources are limited. We all can not live up to a life standard when it is about expecting to always deserve more and to have the right of asking for more all the time like the world owes us. *What are we willing to give in return? We know the expression “nothing in life is for free”. *…so what could be the price for this attitude?

Yes, we found ways to cure some diseases and our grand parents live a lot longer than back in the days. Some live up to Eighty, Ninety or One-hundred years. We can reach a very proud age, while circumstances in life are more comforting as in most cases we have a save place, we do not need to starve or freeze. Mostly we have a job, friends and family and interests that keep us in balance. All this comforted us and kept us going. At the same time our wealth created different challenges and new diseases we currently are in the process of learning to deal with.

The old “work live balance” or life standard seems to be expired. In the past all this worked – sometimes more, sometimes less. We learned: it is about balance! Contradictions always have been part of our life and we sure can take it to the extremes at some points, but we shouldn’t dare to believe that this can be a standard. Living on the edge is playing with fire. Certainly “a bill will be due” at some point, if we overdo it. It comes down to cause and action. We can not close our eyes thinking we can proceed with a degenerated mentality.

Looking at younger generations we are confronted with challenges we could not foresee, such as burnouts, cellphone and computer addictions, overweight or anorexia, missing motivation and so much more – a feeling of being lost at some point in life. A generation and it’s own diseases. It is about to learn that whatever our parents, grand parents and grand grand parents have passed on to us – all this can not be taken for granted. Nothing is for free and nothing is for good. We need to raise questions again, we need to investigate and go deeper. We need to accept contradictions.

Always living to our limits won’t work for good and it sure has in impact on us and the world we live in. Especially when at the same time, we don’t have a real reason to keep us going.

Once a wise men told me to look at my life and divide it into parts such as 1) family and friends, 2) work, 3) hobbies, 4) beneficence and faith. These four parts can be seen as four legs of a chair. In this case it is a stable and strong chair, when all four parts are in balance. It’s what we all desire.

Unfortunately we all have our package to carry and life turns out not to be as simple as a four leg chair. Sometimes life is different. Sometimes we can sit on three legs as well. Sometimes we juggle to remain in balance. Sometimes we stumble and fall. We all know this feeling of falling. We all learned our lessons in life, that sometimes we need to have our knees bleeding to stand up with the right motivation and do it right next time. We are used to the lessons in life and are fighting for goals and aims. This is an attitude we gotta pass on to the next Generations: To do good and expect anything and to fight for what we truly believe in while cherishing a balanced life!

I was born in a generation when some sort of wealth was given. Still we learned we need to give our all and we can make our dreams come true – when we work hard enough. At the same time, life thought us that anything is limited and we really need to cherish and enjoy it. Remaining in balance.

I’m afraid my generation overdid it: maybe too often we thought that anything is possible. Always reaching a high standard and reaching our limits and the maximum. We turned out to be like antique chairs that easily are thrown away. At some point an old chair might be shaky, sometimes a leg might be missing or broken. Those are our scars, our lessons learned.

We know: we need to learn from it and move on wiser. Easily said, but very difficult to hold on to when your caught in a daily routine of every day life. People enjoy routine to hold on to. It gives strength and keeps you grounded. Sometimes you know when it is time to escape from the rat race. Learn when it is asked for holding on and being strong and also allow yourself time to be weak too.

Get back in balance! All I’m asking is to become real again, being in balance with life and the world we live in. We do owe it to our roots, ourselves and the future generations. We owe it the entire world to be more tentative and cherishing again.