B for Buoyancy

Everyone seems to be seeking work-life balance.  Google it – I got 191,000,000 results in 0.18 seconds.  But balance assumes an even distribution – half here, half there, a little here, a little there, oops, too much there, so more here.  Balance takes control, effort, and constant monitoring.  But life isn’t always so accommodating.

 My yesterday started out calmly enough, my plans laid out hour by hour.  I had a full list but no worries – I was confident I could get it all done.  We had a bathroom sink clogged and dinner guests coming at 7, but the plumber was to arrive at 3, he’d be long gone before the evening began.  I needed to go out at 5.  It was all going to work like a charm.  Until it didn’t.  At 3:30, his arrival was shifted to 6 and there was a new problem, water dripping from the living room ceiling.  My schedule fell apart.  Fortunately, I did not. 

That’s life.  Things happen.  A customer deal blows up and you need to be on a call at 3 AND you have to be at the dentist at 3 – you’ve canceled twice and this cracked crown isn’t going to let you ignore it much longer.  Or you’ve got a choice of how to spend the last 30 minutes of coherency you have left at the end of a particularly long day – finish your personal taxes, finalize an employee’s performance review that’s due the next day, or call and find out how your mom’s doctor’s appointment went today.  

There’s not a lot of balance.  Some days, work rules.  Okay, most days, work rules.  But that only makes the holidays, the family days, the self-care days that much sweeter.  We’re all doing the best we can, right?

So rather than struggle so hard for this work-life balance illusion, I propose we seek work-life buoyancy.  It has a much nicer feel to it.  Life as a river, always flowing, sometimes smoothly, sometimes swelling up, clear blue or murky gray, and me – a little buoy, bobbing along.  Yes, I’ll be overwhelmed at times, but I will bounce back up, I will continue the journey.  Humpty Dumpty was sitting on a wall, a true balancing act, especially for one of such ungainly proportions, and we all know how that turned out.  Nobody could put him back together again.    

But such will not befall us when we go bob, bob, bobbing along.  And did you know that buoyancy is improved when more of an object’s surface touches the water? Think about being in the water horizontally (more of you touching the surface) or vertically.  It takes much less effort horizontally and when you get positioned just right, it requires no effort.  It seems then the best way to get buoyant is to get fully engaged in the river of life – wholeheartedly, mentally, physically, spiritually – less struggling, more float.