It seems like every day we add more weight to our lives…not just those physical pounds, I mean weight to our lives in the form of responsibilities, stress, duties etc. Before you know it we have a plate full of things we need to handle and at times, if we are not very careful, we can get out of balance. You might have noticed that if you are carrying a load, sometimes it is actually easier to carry heavier weights if the load is balanced. If you have more weight in one hand than the other, you get tilted and you spend a lot of effort to keep the load lifted on one side, but if it is countered with another weight on the other side, you can carry it with ease and even more weight than you could with one armful. It all comes down to balance. In our daily lives, we have: Work, Family, Relationships, Finances, Religion, Self, Friends, etc etc…the list goes on from there. Each of these things require time and effort, but if we allow any one of them to consume more effort than another, then everything else because harder to handle and we get out of “balance” and things get hard. Our productivity may decrease even though we feel like we are working harder. Fact is, you probably ARE working harder, but it is not necessary to do so. Having a lot on our plates is not a bad thing…it just has to remain balanced.
For some people, they spend many years trying to discover and define what “success” is. Then it can get crazy when we go after that in the form of greater: Bank balances, bigger houses, business achievements and many other things. Sure, we all need to have a job, work and maybe even a career, but that does not mean it should consume your waking hours. You take away time from the family to work more, make more, do more…but in the end…what does that REALLY get you? There have been many people in history who have gotten to their last days and realized after a dedicated life of hard work and sacrifice, they are short the things that are more important in life. The Bible identifies these things as the ones that can be consumed by fire. Of which LOVE is not one of those. Not everyone is blessed to have family relationships and to those of us who do have them, it seems very easy to take them for granted.
Alexander III of Macedon (know more commonly as ‘Alexander the Great’) conquered many lands, accomplished a lot of historical feats and dies at the age of 32 (Julius Ceaser cried when he saw the statue of Alexander because he had achieved so little at the same age as Alexander when he died.) . When Alexander heard Anaxarchus’s lecture on the infinite number of worlds there were, he cried because he knew he could never conquer them all. His entire existence and focus was centered on the legacy the future would remember him by. Eventually he died like everyone else does, but what was the point? To live a life of conquest and legacy or to live a life of happiness and love? We can still leave a great memory behind of the people we cared for and the things we have done to help others.
On a lighter note…Inigo Montoya from the movie “Princess Bride” stood in a window after finally killing the six fingered man who had murdered Inigo’s father years before and he stated “I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it’s over, I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life.” Again, someone who was dedicated to something that has no eternal value. Revenge is a bitter illness that consumes our life from the inside out. But more than half way through his life, now Inigo was contemplating “Now what?” Wasted days….
Steve Job’s lay in his bed before he died and simply uttered the words: “OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.” Despite whatever he accomplished or wealth he amassed during his life, he was finally facing death and I am sure he might have had some interesting insight in to the importance of using our time wisely while we are alive.
The great Carl Sagan American was an astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy. He was quoted saying “For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.” His views on religion may have varied, but he got this part right! Only through love can we be tolerant of each other’s differences. We do not have to all agree on the same thing every time, but we need to respect each other and be committed to accepting our differences.
So what is it that is consuming your day today? Are you close to a breakthrough at work? Are you finally closing that big deal? Don’t get me wrong…there is no wrong in accomplishing things, just be sure there is adequate balance in other areas of your life.