I loved my chemistry course when I took it in high school, not for getting to make ice cream in a class, but for the science’s ability to explain humanity: specifically humans’ relationships to one another. Of course, no exact science exists (or, I think, ever will exist) to explain human behavior. In science’s attempt to help us understand our surroundings, however, the inverse actually occurs. After all, in discovering the world outside the self, we become more connected to our relationships with others and the working order of the world, both of which teach us invaluable information about ourselves.
Whenever my high school chemistry class discussed the periodic table, I would relate the conversation to human archetypes and how humans react toward each other. Each group on the periodic table, the alkali metals, halogens, noble gasses, etcetera, represented, to me, different human archetypes, of which many options of elements become available to represent individualized types of people. For example, the first group on the left of the periodic table is the alkali metal group. This group contains the elements lithium (Li), sodium (Na), potassium (K), rubidium (Rb), caesium (Cs) and francium (Fr).
Each element in the alkali metals group is extremely quick to react, soft and has one valence electron, meaning they give away one electron to form +1 ions. Thus the human form of a member in this metaphorical archetypal group reacts quickly to situations although they have softer qualities to them and they lose some of their negative energy or negative aspects of themselves when they enter into relationships with others.
The emphasis in most entry-level high school chemistry courses is not to memorize the varying properties between each element, but is instead to balance equations containing different elements. This highlights the importance of learning about the elements in their balanced states, the states in which they will exist outside the periodic table once bonded with other elements.
Balance, we learn, is ingrained within us on an atomic level that we integrate into our everyday lives.
However, my love of balance, as both an everyday practice and a theoretical concept, stems not from science but from what many view as science’s polar opposite: religion. Raised with Buddhist ideas, the importance of balance was highlighted in my household from an early age; Buddhism itself can be referred to as the Middle Way, referencing the way in which Siddhartha became the Buddha through the rejection of both extreme deprivation and extreme indulgence. On a non-religious note, the Western philosophy of Aristotle’s “golden mean” reflects the Buddha’s rhetoric on the Middle Way; Aristotle states that the middle manifestation of any trait, the manifestation between two extremes, will always be the paramount way to express the trait.
At dinner the other night with a close friend, she and I lamented the loss of friends and family to what we determined was a lack of balance. Not only did we speak of death due to addiction, but we also spoke of less extreme losses, losses of contact or amity between friends and family members who couldn’t find ways to balance work and life, alcohol and family, or drugs and friends. We also decided that if anything will slow the steady pace of impending death, it is balance. For most people, the daily practice of balance is not a difficult prescription to follow and subsists as a prescription beloved by body, mind, and spirit.
How do you integrate balance into your own life? Are these ways healthy? In what areas of your life do you see balance being necessary? What can you do to find and cultivate balance in these areas?
