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Author Articles The Cliches Of Imbalance, The Maxims Of Balance
Sometimes all it takes is a little different way of looking at something to bring an extra measure of balance to our lives. This issue, we will simply turn around a couple of trite little sayings that seem to work much better backwards than forwards in this busy world. Some of the catchy little sayings, proverbs, or little notions of traditional wisdom that people (and society) have been repeating to us over the years don’t work anymore. In fact, they aren’t true anymore. In fact, they’ve become part of the problem, rather than part of any solution. And they’re not just cute little clichés or harmless, old-fashioned platitudes. No! They have worked their way into our subconscious and influenced our attitudes. They often prompt unrealistic expectations, turn us into dissatisfied perfectionists, or give us inaccurate perceptions of the world around us. They also produce stress. Some of these old clichés or accepted bits of “wisdom” never were any good – never were accurate and never worked. Others were fine once but simply don’t fit with today. This column will seek to expose a few of the old clichés for what they are – outdated philosophies or inaccurate insights posing as wisdom. Then it replaces the used-up notions with some updated maxims – little statements that reflect our world as it really is, and our lifestyles as they really ought to be. Cliché: An old piece of hackneyed or stereotyped “wisdom” which has become trite and meaningless. Taken from the French clicher, which refers to printing from a metal plate which clamps down and repeatedly produces a stereotyped image. Maxim: A useful and practical catchphrase which states a current truth in a way that gives insight and has a beneficial influence on how we see things and how we do things. Taken from the Latin maxima proposition, which means “greatest statement” or a sound general truth. So, let's turn a couple of old cliches into maxims. First, this old classic: “Don’t Just Sit There, Do Something!” It was my mother-in-law who always said this one to me. "Don't just sit there, do something." Now, don't misunderstand. She liked me, my mother-in-law did -- she still likes me, I hope. She will still like me after she reads this column, I think. She didn’t single me out for the advice. She said it to everyone. “Be up and doing!” “Get off your duff!” “Be active!” “Don't let any moss grow under your feet!” Even, “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” And she said it by example as well as with words. If there was ever anyone more active than my grandmother, it is my mother-in-law. Sitting down is just not part of her modus operandi. She is eight-five as I write this and can still beat me at bowling! (Or weeding a garden, or practically anything else we ever happen to do together.) Well, it is better to be “up and doing” than to be down and drooping. No question. Always has been, always will be. But something has changed! We have evolved into a society where there is so much going on that we are always acting and doing, sometimes at the expense of thinking and feeling. In a less urban, less mechanized, less complex and competitive time, there were natural seasons and periods of reflection and repose. There were natural “breaks” after the planting or after the harvest, and when it got dark at night, work was done. Not so today! We may have business cycles, but none of them involved rest. We have weekends, but they’re usually the time to do the work we couldn’t get to during the week. And we have evenings, but the night belongs to homework with the kids, or to working overtime, or to trying to “play as hard as we work.” One evening, after a particularly long and hectic day, I was eating a late meal by myself in the kitchen and overhearing Linda’s discussion in the living room with our fourteen-year-old Josh. He was saying that he’d had a tough day, too, starting with his five a.m. paper route and two tests in school. Linda was reminding him that his piano lesson was tomorrow and he hadn’t practiced -- and that the dishwasher (his job) was still unemptied. He was telling his mother that he had some math homework to do and he had to finish a scout merit-badge requirement before next week’s Court of Honor, but that the most important basketball game of the year was going into the second half on TV. He also mentioned that he’d promised his friend, Chad, that he’d go over and see his new computer game. Linda, being my mother-in-law’s daughter, offered her usual advice, but in her frustration with her own and her son’s busyness, it came out backward: “Well, don’t just do something -- sit there!” I went in and joined them for a good laugh, but as our amusement subsided, we realized that under the circumstances, the reversed cliché was better advice than the original. Josh had more to do than he possibly could do that night (just as most of us have more to do than we can most of the time), and rather than just doing something, what he needed to do was to sit there for a few minutes and decide what mattered most or figure out some way to get some things done now and some later. We sometimes let ourselves get infected with the notion that any action is preferable to any inaction, that doing is superior to thinking, that doing something -- anything -- is better than occasionally doing nothing at all so we can sit and think instead. In a world where there is an endless number of things to do, we can become fanatic, frantic, whirlwinds of activity working ourselves to an exhausted frazzle each day and yet looking back over the weeks and months and not being able to see much progress. Like someone sawing furiously with a dull saw, we keep doing something and tire and stress ourselves, never taking time to just sit there and sharpen our saw. We need the new maxim that Linda coined by the slip of her tongue: DON'T JUST DO SOMETHING, Sit there long enough each morning to decide what is really important during the day ahead. Sit there long enough once or twice during the day to collect your thoughts, to meditate for a moment, to calm your mind and regain perspective. Sit there on a child’s bed once in a while at bedtime and just listen to him. Sit there and watch a sunset rather than just doing something. Thoughtful “sitting there” is rapidly becoming a lost art, stomped out by trying to do something every minute. Reversing this old cliché in our minds can give us a new maxim that slows us down, tunes us in, and makes us more selective and more purposeful in the things we choose to do. OK, how about another one....another old saying that has become counter productive and stressful: “If a Thing is Worth Doing, It’s Worth Doing Well” My father used to say this one to me -- often. And he lived it! We built a log cabin one summer. Mostly my dad built it -- with what he graciously called “help” from my eight-year-old brother and ten-year-old me. “Pull the nail out if it bends -- don’t just bash it over and start a new nail. Pull it out and straighten it and pound it straight.” It didn’t matter if it was in a place no one would ever see. “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” When my brother and I had our paper routes, the paper was supposed to be on the porch, not on the steps or in the driveway, and there was a huge difference between a “good” report card with B’s and a “great” one with A’s. I remember once when I wanted another job besides the paper route. Dad said, “Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Don’t start something you can’t finish; don’t do it at all if you can’t do it well!” So what’s changed? Well-built homes, good grades, and papers on the porch are all still good ideas. What’s changed is the pace at which we live -- and the sheer number of options and demands we face. My wife, Linda, dropped off a neighbor child one day and went in with him to say hello to his mother. His mother is a busy young professional who is trying to balance her career with her household and with the raising of her three young children. On this particular day she was working on a cake that was so fancy that Linda assumed it was a wedding cake. “Who’s getting married?” she asked. “Oh, no one,” said our neighbor with a laugh. “The church is having a social and they asked me to bring a cake.” “Whew,” responded Linda. “Why such an elaborate one, with all you have to do? You must love to make cakes!” “I hate it actually,” said our friend. “But I was always taught that if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” The silliness of the cliché in that particular situation struck Linda and our friend at that moment and they had a good laugh. “What I should have done,” the neighbor concluded, “is bought an unfrosted cake at the supermarket, frosted it for the church social, and put it on an elaborate cake stand.” In an increasingly complex world, some things are less “black and white” in terms of being worth doing well or not worth doing at all. There are things worth reading, but not carefully or exhaustively. There are places worth only a quick visit. There are some tasks and obligations that we ought to tend to, but with minimum effort and exertion. There are TV channels worth having but not worth watching very often. There are people we can meet without feeling that we must become close friends. There are more and more things worth doing but not worth killing ourselves over. And trying to do everything well is a sure recipe for stress. So ... there are three categories that we need to learn to recognize: FIRST: The relatively small number of things that are truly worth doing well. A good way to recognize them is to ask the question, “Will this matter in five years?” SECOND: There are a huge number of things not worth doing at all -- and ridding ourselves of them can bring a stress-reducing simplicity into our lives. FINALLY: There is the important-to-recognize middle category -- things that are just barely worth doing. It is this third category that leads us to a new maxim: IF A THING IS JUST BARELY Being able to categorize the pressures, demands, opportunities, and options of life into these three groups is perhaps the most basic key to balance and the most basic escape from stress. Once these three categories are defined, recognized, and mentally used, the guilt of not doing everything perfectly disappears and is replaced by a kind of pleasant pride in saving ourselves (by slacking off on the “hardly worth doings”) for the things that are worth doing well.
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By Richard and Linda Eyre