The Balance

The Balance

Life can be seen as a balance between order and freedom. The tension between the two runs through everything from politics to the realities of our everyday lives. As significant as this is, people don’t often stop to think what order and freedom mean.

On the political level, there is a right-wing ideology that asserts freedom is the most important concept in life. Freedom in this thinking doesn’t just mean you are not oppressed, it means you can do whatever you like.

Unbounded freedom is not concerned with the plight of others. It means I can do anything that makes me happy and I don’t need to worry if my actions harm those around me. The problem with this kind of freedom is that it can be synonymous with selfishness.

If a society is to function smoothly, there must be some restriction to what people can do. This is order. Order can range from draconian measures to put down the masses to reasonable rules that protect the interests of the population at large. Speed limits on the highway are examples of order that most people would agree is sensible and needed.

The balance between order and freedom is also significant in our individual lives. When we are small children we have some direction from our parents, but most of the time we are free to choose how we spend our time. Once we are old enough to enter school, our lives become more ordered.

Adults have an even more ordered existence. While we may be free to choose where we live and what jobs we take on, most of us must work if we are going to survive. Work takes up most of our waking time and during work we have little choice about what we do.

During our working lives, freedom is precious. We look forward to weekends and holidays when we can do what we want.

But there is something addictive about the order of our adult lives. Many people are eager to get back to work after long holidays. The predictable nature of work frees us from the responsibility of making decisions.

When retirement comes along, the balance between freedom and order changes drastically. Suddenly most of the imposed order of our lives is gone. We still need to look after chores, but we have much more time to do what we want. We have levels of freedom that we haven’t experienced since early childhood.

This should be a wonderful change, but many people have trouble with a loss of order in their lives. It isn’t uncommon to hear people dreading retirement because they don’t know what to do with all the new free time.

It’s human nature to want some order in our lives. When we retire some of us impose order on ourselves that is far beyond what we had during our time working. Retired people often live lives that are strictly structured. They do the same things every day and even eat the same food over and over.

A way to find balance in life after retirement is to find new things to do. Sports and hobbies can provide order to a life that’s seems meaningless because of its excess freedom.

I sometimes wonder if the search for order is a reason that people write. In the stories we tell, we try to find why the world is the way it is. Maybe we are looking for the order behind reality.

The act of writing is also order. To write we need to be disciplined enough to sit for hours and put down words. Writing can be a way to find order and balance in our lives.