Why bother with balance? | Development Psychology

 “Man must go back to nature for information” 

Thomas Paine.

Something at our inner core tells us that balance in life is important. Indeed, we may notice this only when we are off balance and begin reaping the results of having been off balance for some lengthy period of time, at which point it is often too late. Nevertheless, on some nonphysical plane, we seem to have a mechanism similar to the physical world and that gives us the opportunity to correct our position gravitationally before we stumble or fall.

             Too frequently, however, we fail to heed the warning of this life balance monitoring mechanism, and the results are loss of health, loss of relationships, loss of productivity, loss of aliveness and authenticity, and, most ironically, frequently the loss of very things – job, family, friends – for which we might believe we allowed ourselves to go out of balance in the first place.

Balance is, after all, the natural state of the universe. Even water seeks its own level. There have been hundreds of studies of ecological balance around the globe and of the local disasters that occur when that balance is disrupted by the introduction of some new species foreign to the locality. Examples of this phenomenon include zebra mussels, gypsy months, mute swans, nutria, the water chestnut, purple loosestrife, and the kudzu vine. Each of these animal and plant species had an appropriate niche in its own ecological system, but their introductions into foreign ecologies have been nothing short of catastrophic: None – native species spread rapidly because the predatory checks and balances of their native ecologies are missing, and they then displace native plants and animals further up the food chain – including endangered species. 

Indeed, you may remember the balance upset recently caused by the northern snakehead (Channa Argus), a top–level predator fish native to China that was found in a small pond in Crofton, Maryland. It was dubbed the “Frankenfish” by the press because of its uncanny ability to breathe air and travel short distances over dry land. When an unwitting local resident released into a pond two specimens that had grown too large for his aquarium, the pond’s ecological balance was upset. Northern snakeheads are large predators that can affect the populations of other fish, amphibians, and invertebrates. The nearby Little Patuxent River hosts endangered fish species and recovering populations of anadromous fish (e.g. ., shad) that could be threatened by the establishment of populations of snakeheads if the pond spilled over into the river during heavy rain. In the end, authorities decided to kill all the vegetation in the pond by the application of herbicides, thus starving the animal life of oxygen, and then to complete the elimination of the snakehead – and all the other native species of animals and plants – by releasing poison into the pond. They plan to restock the pond when it is certain that no snakeheads are remaining. In some situations, balance is everything.

Considering that even the stars and planets operate in balance. Look at the way our own planets travel through space. As the earth makes its way around the sun, there are four milestones we recognize as special events, and that recognition itself is based on the balanced relationship these events have with each other. Two of these are in complete balance because they are equivalent although opposite – the vernal equinox and the autumnal equinox. The vernal equinox (approximately March 21) occurs when the sun crosses the equator from south to north; the autumnal equinox (approximately September 23) occurs when the sun crosses the equator from north to south. From a balanced perspective, what makes these two events interesting is that when each one occurs, the length of the light of day and the dark of night are exactly the same on both days even though the events occur opposite each other on the celestial calendar and in space.