The Gift of Balance
Aristotle is my favorite. He just is. I started buying what I believed to be classic books in my early twenties, during that period of self-renaissance when you realize school is gone and you're more or less in charge of what you know from then on. Just stacks and stacks of books, and what I hoped would make me a better person. That's as honest as I can be.
On one of those betterment journeys to Barnes and Noble I came home with a green book with gold letters: Aristotle XVII Metaphysics. It's beautiful still. It's a million years old. So it kind of has to be. Right? Lest it be lost along the way. It's hard not to trust something that has lasted more than one hundred generations of human existence. Ninety-nine? I do not know. But a hundred? That's gotta be something.
Anywhere.
It was while reading that book that I fell in love with Aristotle and his ideas and started looking for more and more things to know about him; like you do when something sparks your interest. And it was then that I learned of what they, the ancient Greeks, started calling The Golden Mean. Or The Golden Middle Way.
Essentially, it's this. You can not just be one thing. You can not be extremely one sided or polarized and maintain a healthy soul. Or be a healthy society even. If you're all beauty, and have no truth, you rot. If you have all truth, and no appreciation for beauty, you rot. Train only for war, and not peace? Rot. Only peace? Rot. Math, but not art? Art, but not math?
You get the idea.
The idea is that balance and equilibrium must be found and maintained in order for any system to work and live. Especially complex systems. And humans are the most complex of all. You. Your insides. And to keep yourself healthy you have to balance the things in your life that take up the most of your time. You love basketball? When you get home from the gym you should read a book. You love books? When you get home from the library you should go for a run.
And then, maybe, to help the ones around you find their balance, too, and their own equilibrium? That might be the most noble pursuit there is.
If you have someone in your life that you know works day after day in an office, staring with tired eyes at spreadsheet after spreadsheet, mapping out their work life in numbers and ratios and calculation after calculation, why not help them find their balance?
