The Art of Balance: And New Ideas for a New Time

By Adam J. Poelstra

In this book, you will find an insightful look into several subjects and ideas, things you find in the everyday as well as the deeply philosophical, presented in a way you may never have heard before. In our time, we often find ourselves on one extreme or the other, politically, ideologically, religiously, making relationships difficult. This book attempts to tackle some of the things hiding behind these differences in an attempt to find cohesion rather than dispute.

Another issue in our time is the way authority often behaves and our reaction to it. Teachers often tell us what to think, rather than how to think. We are told to believe something, not because weve been told why its believable but simply because they say so. Our reaction has been blunt, brutal honesty, as well as skepticism. A decent response to make, though it additionally separates us from one another. This book is an attempt to do some right where much has gone wrong, discussing ideas rather than forcing ideologies.

Come away from this book with lots of new ideas and much to ponder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Oct 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490857558

Adam J. Poelstra

Adam Poelstra is a layman and amateur whose growing reputation as an objective and rational thinker has convinced him he has something good to share with the world. Steeping himself in authors such as C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, he loves thinking in and outside the box. He works with his family in their organic and natural food business Taste of Life, which they own and run in Monument, Colorado.

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Copyright © 2014 Adam J. Poelstra .

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-5753-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-5754-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-5755-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014919104

WestBow Press rev. date: 10/22/2014

CONTENTS

Introduction

PART 1 LIFESTYLE

Chapter 1 Rhythm: Work And Rest

Chapter 2 Work: Growth And Application

Chapter 3 Rest: Solo And Social

Chapter 4 Tact: Boldness And Temperance

PART 2 PARADIGMS

Chapter 5 Responsible Thinking: Accurate Knowledge And Accountable Opinions

Chapter 6 Humility: Meekness And Confidence

Chapter 7 Understanding: Insight And Intuition

PART 3 SPIRITUALITY

Chapter 8 Faith, Hope, And Love

Chapter 9 The Four Pillars Of Human Excellence: Strength, Knowledge, Understanding, And Wisdom

INTRODUCTION

I wish to begin by making clear what I do and do not intend for this book to accomplish. I am a Christian, but by no means do I wish to use this book as an attempt of evangelism or conversion. Should it end up doing so anyway, that will be your decision, but I’ve no intention of doing so directly.

I will sometimes address Christians directly. I will be using rational, logical, everyday reasoning as well as the Bible and references to authors who are all Christian, especially C. S. Lewis, who is my favorite author. Should I have a number of non-Christian readers (which I do hope to), my desire is that the biblical and Christian references will serve at least to show that the Bible and the authors I quote really do have helpful things to say about life and living it well. For the Christian, such references will, of course, serve to further my points.

As my opinions and ideas have developed independently and in so many conversations, I’ve continuously run into the concept of balance. It seems woven into all of life. This is almost always a wise thing to follow. In lifestyle, in mind and thought, and even in religion it seems always to pop up as a very good guideline. If there is a man too busy, we find him to be stressed and making those around him stressed. If there is a woman too intellectual, we find her to be coldhearted. If there is a child too lazy, we make every attempt to invigorate that child. There are many extremes we find repellent, and we try to fix them. But there are some that are not so easy to notice.

There is a quote I once read by Blaise Pascal that reads,

I do not admire the excess of some one virtue unless I am shown at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue. A man does not prove his greatness by standing at an extremity, but by touching both extremities at once and filling all that lies between them.

I found myself thinking, Wait, isn’t the opposite of a virtue a vice? I had to think more. What I came to realize is that there are some virtues that literally result in the opposite behavior, yet in neither case becoming in the least reprehensible. One example would be temperance and boldness. Temperance leads us to remain silent or still when we ought to, yet boldness leads us to take action when we should take it. These are quite opposite in practice, yet they are both useful, and we ought to have both.

So, for the majority of this book, it is my intention to unpack this idea. But more than finding a happy medium or some compromise between two ideas, I’m attempting something more like looking at paradox and finding synthesis. Two seemingly opposing sides grow in strength not in spite of fusing together, but because they have been fused.

It was Malcolm Muggeridge who once wrote that the closer he felt he came to Christ, the further he felt from the modern Christian religion. I must say I feel about the same. Yet, the problems I find repellent in the church are just as bad as those everywhere else. Still, I am a Christian because it is not the people I follow but the ideas.

The failure of people to adhere to a religion is not a valid indictment against that religion. A religion’s truth or falsehood is to be found within its creed. It is people everywhere who are consistently two-faced. Christians will prove one thing with Scripture, then prove exactly the opposite with other Scripture. Atheists say that the facts are true, then tell us there is no such thing as objective existential truth. We all fear paradox it seems, and so we embrace contradiction instead.

The largest issue I keep seeing is that people in authority are constantly finding more and more elaborate ways to convince us to believe them because we say so. Today, our skepticism has placed barriers to believing people who say only because the Bible says so, and to believing people simply because of their reputation or position. And I think rightly so. Yet, this skepticism has cost us something. Since we ask and doubt nearly everything, we no longer have much common ground.

Yet I think we can still find some common ground. In generations past, there have been philosophers who have asked the most dangerous questions. They have searched down to the very brass tacks of life to find what every man and every woman can relate to. Today such individuals are a precious few. What we want is a lack of bias. What we need is empathy for every perspective and worldview. We desire some new ideas. Today we have so many easy answers, but what we need are better questions. Toward the end of this book, it is my intention to do just that—to seek something new to add to the old.

Before we begin, I would like to state that I do not believe myself to be a perfect example of any of the balances I will be discussing. I do not believe perfect balance to be either achievable or necessary. But I do think it is a good guideline and a gradual result of wisdom. Perfect balance is something we should take into account, but we should not be obsessed with it.

I’ve decided to order my topics with the first portion being about lifestyle: actions, tangible things. The second portion will be about mind and thought, or paradigms. Finally, I’ll end with religion and spirituality.

PART 1

LIFESTYLE

This first section is all about the everyday balances. In one way, these chapters could be considered as merely good advice. I think this is a very good way to view it for it is not my intent to suggest that what these chapters present is absolutely the way to live. The information is presented as food for thought.

At the same time, there is a much bigger idea I’m hoping to address in this section. In our everyday lives, we may feel that we have little impact on our bigger picture. The mundane and everyday is indeed common most of the time. What we often miss is that how we conduct ourselves in these mundane, everyday parts of our lives will determine where we will be in the long run.

I’m not talking about the same annoying message we constantly hear today—the idea that we should all have big, lofty dreams and therefore should focus our lives now in that direction. Not every person wants lofty dreams. Some of us simply want to live a good life and not necessarily be the very best at this or that. I think this is fine, but that does not mean we have no obligation to apply ourselves in our own lives.

There is a difference between simply living our lives and living into our lives. Not every one of us may have lofty plans, but every person can try to live a little better today than yesterday. A little better this year than last. Even in rest, we can simply take it easy, and we can live into our rest. That is, we can rest on purpose. We can merely live, and we can live on purpose. The little decisions we make today, the habits we start and keep, will in the end make or break entire lives.

And so it is important that we know what we’re doing and why we are doing it, and we should have an idea where it may be leading. There are some decisions we can make that have no moral or ethical standing and that seem innocent enough, which will ruin large parts of our lives down the road—things like working really hard at our jobs, studying continuously, living for pleasure and rest. Many of us prefer to only think of life in terms of right and wrong; we don’t often think in terms of good and better. For example, it is good to work hard at our jobs, but it is better to do good work and care for those we love.

The point is that we should be creative, ambitious, and inventive with our own lives. Whether or not you agree with the ideas I will be presenting in the following chapters is not my primary point. Often the only thing we need is to start thinking outside the box; to step back a bit and ask honest questions. I’m hoping to provide the raw material that will perhaps start that process.

CHAPTER 1

RHYTHM:

WORK AND REST

In America, work and rest are in operation everywhere. We encourage high goals of achievement and advertise all the best ways to get the most out of rest. Yet, we still struggle to feel a sense of achievement and to feel truly renewed after off time. Stress seems sometimes to be as big a problem as cancer. With so many people overworking, undersleeping, and so on, stress has become a hot topic for speakers and advertisers. In all too many cases, our lifestyles have become so convoluted that we fail to live well in areas which would have been considered basic in the past.

On the other side of this issue, we find so many people using all of their time doing virtually nothing useful and spending their lives partying or staying at home. Of the topics I’ll be bringing up throughout this book, this one feels like a local epidemic, so to speak. It seems that every person bends to one side or the other on this, and neither is a healthy way to live. I will take some time to examine each individually, and then I’ll discuss what these two, united and balanced, might look like.

WORK

When the word work is spoken, what comes to mind? Nine-to-five days? What you do to make a living? A four-letter word? True, most of us think first about jobs, but I’d like to go into more than just that. Work, in my view, can happen when we are at home, when we’re sitting on the couch, when we’re at a conference, or sometimes even when we’re just thinking about something. What work is and its applications is a large topic of its own and another balance in itself, and this will be the topic of the next chapter. For now, I’ll be focusing on the idea many of us are bombarded with in our society: if you focus all your attention on climbing and achieving, you’ll be happy and healthy. This is just not true.

It is doubtlessly true that doing little to no work in one’s life is extremely damaging. It’s hard to really get anywhere substantial without working. However, I think the sort of person who is more of a relaxed, not extremely ambitious sort who simply works enough and not much more may be in a much safer lifestyle than the sloth or the workaholic. So long as he or she can hold down a job well, what really is morally or culturally wrong with that?

Still, many of us are fairly pressured to strive, achieve, and be ambitious. Maybe it comes from one’s culture or one’s parents or by the fact that we glorify financial success in America via virtually every other billboard, magazine, and commercial (buy this and you’ll be happier if you have this). In and of itself, the encouragement to achieve is not wrong. Where it goes wrong is when it becomes primary to our very lives.

Should we let it become our whole point in life, there need not be any end to the obsession. The question, Can I do more? will always be answered yes, but should we keep asking it? Still worse is when it comes to the point that we feel we are proving ourselves better than everyone else. Obsessive working can easily ruin our personal lives by itself, and if we should add the idea of being better than everyone else to that obsession, there is probably no better way to become a terror to everyone we know and love. To encourage others not just to be jealous of you but also to feel that you are of a higher class is to effectively cut yourself off from the human race and live the most lonely life possible, even in the constant presence of others.

Some of the most commonly known overworkers are chefs. We know of their reputation for being both overweight and mean, but we