The Art of Balance
In the arts, balance adds to the expression of the work—bringing all the elements together that the artist imagines as essential to the piece. Whether it’s dance, music, visual art, or any other genre, balance helps to bring meaning—to tell the story, and to experience the work.
In my late teens, my dance instructor would constantly talk about finding and focusing on our center—the place from where our power and movement sprung. The control through a dancer’s balance enables seemingly effortless shifting of torso and limbs into the arcs and bends of each choreographed movement. The balance of energy and form displays prowess, elegance, and style.
In music, instruments and vocals are balanced for tone, rhythm, and volume—bringing out the beauty of the melody and intricacy of the harmony.
A painter’s canvas is her landscape to achieve balance of color, symmetry, and shape.
We can hear, sense, and see when a work of art is in balance, otherwise, something feels a little off and we don’t usually connect as well with the work.
In life, we also need to strive to find the balance that keeps us grounded in our values, functioning from our authenticity, and connecting from our soulful creativity. Recognizing our place of balance prevents downward spirals into extremes that warp our perception and subsequent behavior.
“Strap In . . . That’s Life” —Jon Batiste
In his last post, Greg shared the monumental success jazz pianist Jon Batiste recently achieved with his five Grammy wins. Jon married his girlfriend of eight years, author Suleika Jaouad, the night before she was to have a bone marrow transplant for the leukemia she had been fighting since she was in her twenties.
In a CBS Sunday Morning interview, Suleika talked about balancing two realities—the heart-breaking, painful things and the beautiful, soulful things—in the palm of one hand. Holding a balance between these two opposites is how Suleika stopped the grief from taking over. She found balance through creative expression—to convey the impossible and the unendurable: using a canvas to paint her experience and turning dread into happiness by bedazzling her rolling walker with jewels of every size and color.
Jon’s balance meant not letting the darkness take over, by holding on to the light as he wrote nightly lullabies to bring healing for Suleika.
Wisdom is gained in holding the tension of two opposites—we grower stronger in our resolve and see with more clarity the things we cherish.
Author and major proponent of polarity thinking Barry Johnson says that polarities are two points of view that are in tension yet need each other. It is usually something we cannot solve, as in a problem, but something we have to learn how to manage.
You manage it by getting the benefits of each while appreciating the limits of each. It is not a static situation. It is a process, an ongoing flow of shifting emphasis from one to the other and back again.
—Barry Johnson
Each opposite is a powerful energy system with its own truth and wisdom—in Suleika and Jon’s case, as with many of us, the polarity of optimism and reality is where we strive for balance. As we face life and business challenges, we can approach them with both-and thinking to recognize the interdependencies in our situation. Paying attention to both sides allows us to embrace a more complete picture and not over-focus on one or the other to our detriment. Finding balance is not easy, but it can be soul-satisfying.
