You have doubtless read about creating balance in your life. Common trade-offs include work vs. play, family vs. friends, and child-rearing vs. everything else.
Quality time is also mentioned as if it were possible to offer small amounts of devoted attention to one’s children in compensation for frequent or lengthy absences.
Something is missing here, or, one should say, there is at least one unmentioned challenge to reaching the equilibrium you are shooting for. It is how much time you spend preoccupied with troublesome ideas and feelings compared to the amount dedicated to lifting your spirit.
Further complicating the matter, the mind often drifts when not focused on something chosen or required.
Like the current of a river, the absence of focus carries some minds to dark places, including loss, anxiety, and physical pain. Those who are less troubled and more buoyant might land in a more agreeable resting place when the water grows still.
Wherever one lands regularly is called his set point, his usual state of being — his typical condition. The notion of a characteristic destination or norm also applies to such qualities as weight and body temperature.
Another feature of emotional balance is the source of the up or down emotion you sense within. Watching lots of partisan TV can impair a sense of peace. The alternative of avoiding commentary on societal distress might seem better, but it provides only temporary relief and a lack of preparedness to take on the part of life you find unsettling.
Each individual makes a choice about this, whether aware of it or not. Less noted are those who hold the dark and the light at the same time:
Alas, our fundamental experience is duality: mind and body, freedom and necessity, evil and good, and certainly world and God. It is the same with our protest against pain and death. In the poetry I select(ed) [for my anthology “A Book of Luminous Things”], I am not seeking an escape from dread but, rather, proof that dread and reverence can exist within us simultaneously. — Czeslaw Milosz
Milosz suggests one can give due consideration to two states of being, each believed to exclude the other. In 2025, this might mean seeking joy in beauty, music, friendship, exploration of the world, and love as a first step.
It can also involve momentarily setting aside some of life’s ills while carefully selecting a tolerable portion to concentrate on and enlarging one’s resilience and capacity to endure.
Faith can enable balance, whether religious, belief in oneself, or confidence in what Martin Luther King called “the arc of the moral universe,” slowly bending toward justice.
A key to greater balance is recognizing that balance is never fixed—it never reaches a stationary permanence. Thus, even master meditators must keep practicing to approach a state of serenity.
Think of the tightrope walker. He forever adjusts his stance and the pole he holds across his body while his feet move him toward his goal.
Bravery and ways to defeat anxiety are also part of what he learns, as is the skill to progress along a thin, straight line in his circular arena. His certainty of where he is going is no small factor in his likelihood of success. He is occupied with one task alone.
Accepting the never-completed balancing act necessary to your journey might calm you. Fighting against this necessity—believing in its unfairness and raging against the world for fashioning this predicament—will do you no good.
One more thing.
If you’d like to hear an upbeat four-minute speech for all of us given by Adam Clayton Powell in the late ’60s, here it is: “Keep the Faith, Baby.”
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The top and bottom photos are another example of the brilliant work of Laura Hedien: Laura Hedien Official Website.
The first is Afternoon Sun in East Lothian, Scotland, 10/2020; the last is Bald Eagle Along the Mississippi, Near Rock Island, IL, 2022.
The first of the two paintings above is Ivan Aivazovsky’s The Ninth Wave, 1850. The second is August Macke’s Tightrope Walker from 1913 or 1914.
Maintaining emotional balance when faced with life’s fierce winds is no easy task. My faith in a greater power within me has kept me moving forward across the unsteady tightrope.
I agree with Czeslaw Milosz that “dread and reverence can exist within us simultaneously.” After all, it’s through the dread, anxiety, and societal distress that we can learn to appreciate the beauty and reverence of our human existence.
I do not doubt faith made a difference in your challenging path, Rosaliene. Your ability to survive the high wire and do good in the world is remarkable. May you continue. The world needs those who are like you.
I appreciate your supportive comments, Dr. Stein <3
Thanks so much for this, Gerald. I needed the reminder not to get too up when things are going well or too down when things are going poorly. All the best.
Thanks, Frank. And as the Buddhists remind us, don’t get too attached.
“A key to greater balance is recognizing that balance is never fixed—it never reaches a stationary permanence.” – Wow, I feel that through and through! I love your analogy of a tight rope walker.
Your discussion of the unmentioned challenge of where we spend our mental free time is so fascinating. Harnessing that could definitely be a help with balance!
Thank you for an interesting and thought-provoking essay, Dr. Stein. Happy New Year!
Thanks, Wynne. I’m glad you enjoyed it. We look for a changeless world in vain. If we want to adjust to the conditions we do have, my view is that there has never been a more fast paced, changeable world on the planet. That is the only place we can start. Grab your beam, center yourself, and start walking! Happy New Year to you, as well!
I love this essay! Years ago, when I heard of needing inner emotional balance to better navigate my life, I found it a terrible struggle. The more I tried to achieve this said balance, the further it seemed to get for me, until one day I realized that I didn’t like myself very much and with every tiny upset in life I spoke exceedingly harshly to myself, sending myself plummeting into despair, anxiety and depression. I’d pull myself out of it o ly for something else to happen, sending me down that rabbit hole again. I began to believe that achieving inner emotional balance was for other people, not me.
When I realized that I didn’t like myself, I sat with that for a while as I determined that I needed to yeach myself to like myself. I set a goal of trying to suspend inner judgment of my actions and thoughts and try to speak gentle, encouraging things to myself. I was motivated by Louise Hay and Dr. Wayne Dyer. These new actions felt weird and not normal to me, but I was tired of feeling how I had for years, so I kept picking myself up and persisting. I was actually amazed that it worked, as I was sure it wouldn’t, for me anyway. Little did I know that I was slowly building new neural pathways in my brain that ended up completely changing my resting set point. By working on something else, I was able to bring my inner thoughts and emotions into better balance, without those roller-coaster upset and downs. It was so amazing to me that this was even possible.
These inner changes altered how I approached life, too, allowing me to be able to step away from drama that some people create, I stead of getting sucked into it.
I find it amazing that balance is achievable, with persistence!
Happy 2025!
In my clinical experience it was rare to find patients who led the therapeutic process. It seems even more remarkable that you transformed yourself on your own in the way you have described. Extraordinary, Tamara!
Thanks, Dr. Stein! I was always a DIY person, I simply applied it to myself! I know the steps are difficult, and that’s why I cheer people on and give support whenever and wherever I can.