Have you ever seen The Lord of the Rings? Harry Potter? Die Hard? Star Wars? The Terminator? There’s a great thing that all these stories (and a few others) have in common: a good guy and a bad guy.
Wouldn’t it be great if real life was like that? You know, a Sauron to fight, a ring to destroy, a bittersweet, really, really prolonged happily-ever-after when you were done?
We all know, at least intellectually, that’s not how the world works. Things aren’t black and white. Nonetheless, our minds crave definition, categories, simplicity. Even though reality defies simplicity. Nothing is simple. Nothing is pure. Nothing is definite. No one you meet is going to be good or evil and very few decisions you can make are going to be only right or only wrong.
Nuance is the name of the game, and nuance is the exact opposite of how our minds actually work. So it takes effort. Have you ever heard of yin-yang? It symbolizes this fantastic notion of interconnected, complimentary opposites, two sides of a coin, no one without the other. Isn’t that beautiful?
Wish as we might for the contrary, life isn’t about being one thing or the other, about being good or bad. It’s about balance. You and everyone else have to find your own unique balances in life. Like the balance of work and play.
Too much work and life is pointless. Too much play and life is meaningless. But different people in different situations can find their balances anywhere on the spectrum.
I particularly like to use this concept to analyze virtues. To live a happy life, in my view, you have to balance “virtue” with “vice” because, like yin and yang, they’re not designed to exist without one another.
For instance, let’s look at this most beautiful virtue: generosity. You might think that there are just some people out there capable of giving up everything for others. And you’d be wrong.
Pure selflessness can’t exist. You can’t give if you have nothing. You can’t give of yourself without a self of which to give. You have to find something that you can take and want to take to balance out your giving. Just ask any parent, if you don’t take care of yourself, how are you going to take care of your child?
The people you often think of as being selfless tend towards either (or both) of two things:
- They are completely out of balance in their lives and therefore deeply unhappy.
- What they take is an incredible amount of pride in their sacrifices. And sometimes, for some people, that pride is enough to balance them out.
If you haven’t found a balance between generosity and selfishness, you’ll know it. Either you give and give until you have nothing left and end up a sad, resentful, hollow shell of the person you once were or you take and take and end up sitting on a hard, lumpy mound of treasure, angry and paranoid, completely unable to enjoy anything for fear of losing a single penny.
Or maybe you’re somewhere in the middle. I guess some people are somewhere in the middle.
But you get my point. It’ll hurt if you give more than you can handle. It’ll hurt if you never share. Like I said, it’s how humans were designed: to be takers and givers. And the more of us realize it, the more harmonious the world can be.
Literally any good thing taken too far becomes harmful. If you’re too kind, people are going to walk all over you. If you’re too patient, you’ll spend your entire life waiting. If you’re too careful, you’ll never do anything. If you’re too courageous, you’ll get yourself killed. If you’re too humble, you’ll never rise to be the best you you can be. If you’re too concerned with right and wrong, you’ll become a tyrant. If you’re too just, everyone is damned.
So let yourself and everyone else off the hook for falling short of your impossible ideals. Instead, aim for a harmonious balance.
One more point, I mentioned earlier that we crave definition, categories, and simplicity. And the truth is, it’s a useful tool. We don’t have the time or the brainpower to base our decisions on every detail of a complex and nuanced world. And I’m not saying we should try. All I’m saying is that we need to stay aware of it. Especially when it comes to people.
We sort people into boxes. We do. We have to. It’s fine. This person likes cars, this person was in the military, this person is much older than I am. It’s okay to define people in your head in easy terms. But the more boxes, the better.
The most dangerous thing that we can do is start sorting people into the “like me” and “not like me” boxes.
Like if you’re a Broncos fan and you meet a Raiders fan, you put them in the “Raiders fan” box. Which means you don’t discuss football with them. You don’t put them in the “not like me” box, which means you’re mortal enemies and must never be in a room together lest you murder each other.
Same applies to Prius drivers and pickup truck drivers. Same applies to Christians and atheists. Same applies to Democrats and Republicans.
And that’s all I’m going to say about that.
