Bee Life In Balance: How To Live With Enviable Quality

It’s not difficult as an outsider to see if a person’s values really are about having a life in balance. Watch the choices they make on a repeated and regular basis.  That tells the story.

With her drawings, artist Wendy MacNaughton shares guidelines Mia Birdsong has learned as an urban beekeeper about how to live a balanced life.

A prominent professional over several months made repeated appointments with me for marriage counseling. However, he had a pattern of cancelling, sometimes only a couple of hours before the appointment time. Each time the reason for cancellation or no-show was that he had emergency issues come up with his patients.

We all have choices that confront us.  Fundamentally, those choice-decisions are about what we do with our time. Over time, time management reveals our true values, no matter what else we may say.

In the case of this “successful” person, he had a thriving private practice and a failed marriage all because of how he choose to allocate his time. One he over-fed with time.  The other he starved.  He said he wanted both. His repeated action patterns spoke otherwise. Life does seem to be about trade-offs.  It is also can be about balance.

A life in balance always requires at least minimal time investment in family and friends. Out-of-balanced lives go sick and eventually extinct. As do environments, economies, neighborhoods and bee colonies.

Our culture is not kind to the concept of balance.  Specialization is not balance. Superiority is not balance. Being a dilettante is shunned.  Being an expert is prized. To be the best requires an “all-in” lifestyle with no room or time for anything else. Mediocrity is not acceptable, even though the true meaning of the word means “common” or “average.”  But that’s the point: few deliberately seek to be average. Being common and ordinary by design is laughed at.

The balanced life is the middle ground and known to be the best spot for survival, which most people cherish. Thus, most winners and upper percentage dwellers end up unhappy, living life out-of-balance worrying about loosing what they have for which they have so dearly paid.

No, you can’t buy happiness. But, you can accept tradeoffs and to your time in such a way that more of your needs met. You must willing to not overdo it in any particular area of life and spread your time around.

Don’t want the conflicted life?  We can learn from the bees how to live life in balance.