One of the crucial life lessons that Mioggi taught the Karate Kid is balance. Mioggi sat and fished as his young student did karate moves standing on the bow of the boat. Life is a constant balancing act between spiritual, financial, family, and community priorities. People who ignore the element of balance in their lives do so at their own peril.
Every successful relationship: friendship, marriage, mentor, business, or casual acquaintance, is built upon the foundation of balance. When certain invisible lines are crossed the relationship begins to unravel. What we take from a relationship and what we give must be put into a balanced equation that can only be figured out through experience.
For instance, in some marriages, a spouse can demand more attention than is practical or healthy and it will create an unbalance that can eventually destroy the relationship. Even worse, we can become enablers of our spouse’s dysfunction and get trapped in a lifetime of unfulfilled needs and desires.
Balance can only be realized through discipline. We must think through our value systems and then have the courage to act and bring change. Life is like sailing. It is an ongoing series of adjustments and corrections to our course.
I remember a lady in our community when I was growing up who was morbidly obese. She had an addiction to a certain soft drink that she consumed in large volumes all day every day. It would seem that step one would be to stop buying the substance that you are addicted to. And if you can’t discipline yourself, get professional help before you kill yourself. An imbalance in her eating and drinking habits took over and robbed her of a higher quality of life.
An imbalance between work and family can permanently scar our children emotionally and destroy the best of marriages. We must be careful not to build idols in our lives and then bow down to worship them. The way we manage our time priorities affects everyone who is in our lives.
Balancing is fine art that boils down to basic wisdom. Wisdom is learned two ways. The first is the hard way, the school of hard knocks. The second is the easier way, learning from others older or more experienced than ourselves. Feed back from people close to us is also a way to learn wisdom. The quality of your life will greatly improve as you seek out the timeless wisdom of balance.
