The concept of balance is considered a
fundamental quality for the good life. We believe that only a balanced approach
can provide the reasonable stance, whether we’re talking about eating,
religion, work, sleep, sex or money. Our language reflects this view through
such expressions as “an unbalanced individual”,
“a chemical imbalance”, “a balanced economy”. The unbalanced desire of addiction has spawned
every conceivable form from chocoholic to workaholic or shopaholic. And yet for
all the lip service balance receives as the prudent path, we worship excess.
Should we aspire to balanced lives?
Certainly not when it comes to love. The very expression “falling in love”
speaks to the need for a loss of balance. It is hard to imagine what balanced
love looks like, if it looks like love at all. Don’t we want to believe we would die for
someone or some thing? Can we say what amount of love or grief or belief is
excessive?
The notion of balance implies an awareness
of what is too little and what is too much. But one can only identify excess by
knowing what is enough, something we struggle with (“enough is enough” is as
close as we’ve come). We seem much better at identifying excess in others, and
we are mesmerized by it. The righteous
indignation and moral superiority that comes with labeling someone else’s
excess is made all the more pleasurable for its reassurance. It implicitly
suggests that we know our limits, how much is enough and appropriate, that we
are in control of our desires.
We all have some form of excess that feeds
our favorite rant, drug addicts, alcoholics, suicide bombers, narcissists, fat
people, anorexics, CEO salaries, celebrity orgies, serial killers, faith,
atheism. But the one we find most
outrageous or offensive or unreasonable or fascinating, tells us something
important. Show me which excess you
can’t abide and I’ll show you who you are.
How can we understand our relationship
with excess? How do we continue to believe that more money or cars or shoes or
food or sex will make us happy? Why are we the only animal that can be made ill
by our appetites?
It is precisely because money or cars or
shoes or food or sex is not quite what we want that we find ourselves thinking
that perhaps more would be satisfying. When we have too much, it is because we
have too little of what we need.
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