A Balanced Life

Can we have our cake and eat it too? No? Does that sound too greedy? But why not? Why can’t I have a great career? A good family life? Enough leisure time? Adequate “me” time? All of the above, instead of picking my choices from one of the above? Sounds bizarre to you? Yeah to me too. All I want is to have a balanced life, where I can work a little, play a little, sleep a little and just lie down there and daydream a little. But increasingly I find that I just can’t find the time to fit all of this into my daily schedule. No I am not trying to beat my own drums that I am very busy and can’t find the time. The truth is sometimes I just can’t remember where the time went when I reflect on it at the end of an average day. Some of it surely went sitting and waiting in traffic on my daily commute, up and down the city working at two jobs at either end of the metropolis. But travelling does give me the time to catch up on my old favorites on FM radio channels and I am usually in a chirpier mood after listening to for instance “mundhiri muthaella syenjukku” or whatever it was from the song “nenjinelle, nenjinelle” from the incomparable AR Rahman. Leaving that aside, travelling also gives me a great perspective to write the kind of short fiction I like to write. I look at people and try to imagine their everyday lives and then I use them as characters in one of my stories. Where else would I go for authentic personalities if I spend all day locked up in a cubicle listening to people explain in great detail what they think their disease is and what treatment should I do to them?

Nutritionist’s talk a lot of balanced diets. About how we need carbohydrates/proteins/fats in equal measure…but every single diet out there stresses one particular aspect in favor of the other- low-cal diet, no-fat diet and they all seem to work to some extent. What works for food ought to work for life too right? Do we need to live a balanced life or can we live a life where we are happy to accept that life is essentially unbalanced and you just can’t fit in all you want to do, the operating word here being “want”, in a span of 24 hours? What if you were to work all week and rest all Sunday? Like the good lord told us to do on Sabbath? Is that a balanced life? Or are you building up to having a coronary? What if I just pick and choose one aspect of my life? Say my career? And revolve all the rest of my life around it? Arrange to have a convivial family life with someone who respects my need to work hard at my career even at the expense of forgoing any leisure time or activity? Can it be done?  I definitely hope so. When we get to the core of it the only persons who can choose to have a balanced life, do all that their hearts desire- rest, relax, spend time with family, work within limits- are those who were born with a golden spoon or those who have already attained a certain level of affluence where money becomes superfluous. All the rest of us poor mortals have to slog our butts off to make a decent living and stay off the poverty line. We can ready in lifestyle magazines about the heady experience of living a balanced life and then get on with trying to balance all our different priorities into the same time frame. Live one day at a time within our means and not be greedy to have it all. In the end its better to be practical rather than be idealistic. And keep alive hope that someday…..