Balance is a myth
Like all our lives do sometimes, my life shifted recently. I went from a full-time job to a part-time job with the intention of growing my therapy practice; several months later, I left my prior (then-part-time) job to focus on providing therapy full-time. With this shift, I’ve been trying to identify a new rhythm, a new schedule. Separately, I’m also raising an absolutely energetic and exuberant rescue puppy who just turned one and requires a great amount of attention and exercise. Within the last month, I contracted Covid, which I was thankfully able to work through but still have some lingering symptoms. (It also required that I cancel a planned trip to see family in the Midwest.) My puppy went to the vet and needed to wear a cone; between the cone and lingering Covid symptoms, puppy walk-times shifted; puppy playdate availability shifted (i.e., she wasn’t allowed to play with other pups for over a week). In addition, my partner’s working more night and weekend hours right now. And then there were end of school-year happenings: I don’t have children, and I support and rally behind some, including new high school graduates! I share all this to highlight that life is not static.
Un-static-ness of life
Aside from the difficulty in setting a schedule or routine at present, I’ve never been able to set one. I’ve always tried to be overly organized and color code my calendars, noting appointments, tracking habits, and outlining deadlines and tasks. Each time a new semester or quarter started when I was in school, I was hopeful I could develop a routine; the first couple weeks of each new academic period seemed chaotic, and I’d tell myself things would normalize. I’d find the sweet spot where I wasn’t in all new classes, and I could develop a schedule allowing me to do all the things that I both needed to do and wanted to do. The newness of the academic period faded, but then the need to focus on research for papers and studying for tests increased. I never had two weeks that looked the same. And, I still don’t. If you do have two weeks where nothing unexpected arises, I need to meet you.
Life simply isn’t static. Perhaps we try to tell ourselves it could be because stability sounds … well, stable. Instead, life is uncertain. Part of the reason many of us go to therapy is learning to roll with the punches, to surf or ride the waves, to become more psychologically flexible because we yearn for certainty. We think maybe we’ll discover some system or pattern or formula to allow us to move seamlessly from one thing to the next and get it all done. But, when aren’t there snafus that arise where we don’t have to do a quick juggling of events or plans?
Can balance be attained?
When there’s no certainty in life and there’s always going to be juggling, it begs the question: can balance ever be attained? A couple weeks ago, I alluded to my issue with the concept of “work-life balance,” noting my problem was two-fold. The first part of that was balance doesn’t exist. (The second was work is part of life; they’re not separate!) Let’s pretend balance exists. What are you balancing? Since work is part of life, are you instead trying to balance work with personal time? But what’s “personal time?” Taking care of others isn’t the same as taking care of oneself, though taking care of others may be part of what you mentally need to take care of yourself. I can’t imagine considering cleaning up the kitchen and doing dishes as “personal time.” It’s not part of what we typically consider work time, as that’s time spent furthering our employers’ needs. Maybe we need to balance “work time” and “non-work time”; but unless any of us want to work half the day (i.e., 12 hours), you won’t achieve balance there. Maybe the equation is balancing “personal time” and “non-personal time”; as amazing as that could be, I can’t imagine getting to engage in actions that I’d consider “personal” for twelve hours of my day!
The concept of balance suggests there’s dichotomies; there’s some stuff on one side of the scale, and there’s some stuff on the other side. But when can everything be categorized easily into two distinct, never-overlapping groups? Ideally, many of us want life to be some mixture of: sleep, work, exercise, eating healthfully, taking care of others, time for oneself to decompress, time for oneself to find joy or pleasure, socialization… and the list continues. What’s the formula where these things all balance one another perfectly to create the perfect combination for you? Chances are, too, what one person needs differs from what the next person needs. If you abstractly locate that perfect balance or equilibrium, then something like Covid or a dog in a cone inevitably comes along. And then, you need to shift quickly to avoid toppling.
Flexibility instead of balance?
Instead of striving for balance, maybe what we all want is actually flexibility. Or acceptance of uncertainty. By emphasizing balance as an end goal, we may experience feelings of failure when we’re unable to reach something that isn’t attainable for most of us. We might question our capacity to function as competent humans when we’re finding ourselves unable to attend to all the things in a way we think is healthy or to the extent we’ve internalized messages that we should.
A preferable goal may be learning to know ourselves better and being able to connect to ourselves in a way that allows us to pinpoint and accept what we actually need when the uncertainty of life presents us with obstacles that destabilize us. Maybe we don’t need to immediately address that obstacle, hoping to get it out of the way immediately, so we can return to the pursuit of some mythical state of balance. Maybe we can recognize that despite all that’s going on in our lives, we might need a break from work to connect with friends or to kayak in order to find the mental space necessary to address the latest obstacle. Maybe we just need to accept obstacles will arise, and curveballs will be thrown. In order to not topple, we need different things at different times, and we don’t need to judge ourselves harshly for not having it all under control.