the scales

try making up a simple scale, with 2 ends and a fulcrum right in the middle, put weights at both ends and make it balance. simple? alright, making the same device, but changing the 2 ends to a 3 ended scale. putting a 'Y' shape object with 3 same length arms, and make it balance, pretty simple too right? how bout making it 4?? a '+' shape objects with 4 arms, balance it on a fulcrum and making sure its flat. still a simple task right? now.. if we increase the number of arms till its a shape of a flat circle, like a dinner plate as an example. putting the middle of the dinner plate on a nail, balancing it, then try putting food all around the surface of the plate and balance it, making sure its flat so that the sauce of the food won't spill over, how easy is that?? pretty hard huh?

i remember once, a maths lecturer of mine is giving one of his 'life-101' lecture right in the middle of his maths class which makes me wonder till now and i quote, "you learn all this things [maths equations and all] is to learn how to balance in life" of everything he taught me, that's the only thing that sits in my head. learning how to balance in life is a pretty difficult task to do. there are no books, laws, research papers, or anything that could be taken as a guide or to help u to perform this.

back to the dinner plate scale we have there, you are going to put your food on it, balancing it on the nail, carefully placed, you will have a balance plate, with all the food you could have on top. you might put the biggest and heaviest food in the middle and the lightest at the side to keep the plate balance. then you could enjoy a decent peaceful dinner. you might need to move the food a little around to keep the balance, but yes, dinner will be still pleasant and enjoyable. theoretically, by the law of physics and all, its something that could be done with careful calculations of weight, and distance from the axis. but doing it in real life, there are things like, gravity, wind, vibrations and all those variables which could cause the plate to topple over. once that happens, your dinner will be on the floor, you might break your plate, and might even burn yourself with the hot food. whats worst, you might just spoil the night having dinner with your friends, or maybe even injured yourself from the hot food or broken glass.

now that everyone has a good picture of that, change the plate into 'LIFE' and the food into "COMMITMENTS', and there you are right in the middle of the plate. balancing your life with the commitments above making sure it doesn't fall down, you will most probably put the heaviest commitments right in the middle of the plate, and all the lesser ones further and further away from the middle, with the lightest the furthest away at the edge. balancing them all around. once u acquire balance, you will put in effort to maintain them. theoretically, you could divide your time, manage your money and manage your commitments. at times your plate might tilt and the ones on the edge might fall off, but at the end you still could maintain the balance of your plate. BUT, what if, people keep handing you more and more food, so much so that u couldn't finish them. you keep stacking and stacking the food on the plate. then you start throwing away the little food on the sides on your plate go give space to bigger heavier food. be reminded that the plate is still on a nail. at one point, the plate for sure its going to topple and fall. which is exactly the same in life. when one gets too much commitments, their life will go off balance. in life, we tend to pay more attention on bigger commitments, and leave the smaller and less important ones a side.

So, you might say, "all right, i've decided not to take dinner, therefore my plate will be empty!!that will solve all problems right?" you could for a meal or two, but won't you starve to death that way? by not eating any food, you could enjoy the dinner with an empty plate having to problems balancing it on the nail, but, how long could you survive without food? 1 day?? 1 week?? could you go 1 year? food in this picture is essential in survival. there is no such thing as a life without commitments. but, like above, theoretically, it could be balance with all the food above. but how about all the un-accountable variables in life?? people keep putting more and more commitments into you that you couldn't have a balance life anymore. and to mealy keeping the balance, you kick off all the smaller less important commitments like, replying an email to an old friend or chatting with the course mate you once close with.

as commitments increase so much so that your life loses balance and topple down. sometimes your life might not break and you will have a life to pick up. others might have a bad fall, breaking their life into pieces. their friends might think he's no good anymore and leave, leaving him alone, without a life. as he pick his broken pieces back, he might hurt himself, he could have move on, getting a new life, starting all over again, but how many people out there could do that?

sometimes people around you just don't understand how much food you could take, and the effort in keeping your plate balance. they keep putting food on your plate, throwing everything off, and when you tell them that you could not handle any more, they give might use hurtful words in responds. they couldn't have taught how hard to for you to keep the balance, as they aren't the one balancing them, they might think another piece of small cake won't do any harm, but in fact that small piece of cake might be the last straw that breaks the camel's back. you could have spend so much time and effort balancing life as well as you could, by being fair to everyone, and all your commitments, yet, some others might just not see that. to them, accepting their given food is a must.

life is never balance you could say, yet, at lease try to make it as balance as possible, try not to drop too many commitments, throw away those that's taste bad, and keep the most important ones closes to you. some commitments are never worth to be kept on the plate in the 1st place. while others could be eaten quickly. and if you really had too much, maybe you could ask your friend whether they could share the dinner with you. that will then help you keep your balance in place. at the end balancing all of them on the plate, and hopefully, all of us could enjoy a decent dinner.