Axiom for Flourishing 3: Virtue Lies in Balance

I can lose an entire weekend to work and wonder where my life went, or I can split a slice of cheesecake with my wife and call it wisdom. The difference between those two moments? Understanding where virtue actually lives.This is episode three in our ongoing series of axioms for living a flourishing life. Welcome to Live well and Flourish, where I help you understand what it means to live a flourishing life. I'm your host, Craig Van Slyke.If you're ready to think beyond material and external success, if you're ready to take control of who you are and the kind of life you live, if you're ready to flourish, this is the podcast for you. Virtue lies in balance. In many ways, this is among the most important axioms. To live an excellent life, you must find balance in all things.An excellent life is a balanced life. Let me give you an example. I started working on this episode on the day of my anniversary.Tracy and I went to our favorite restaurant, which is really quite nice. They have an excellent menu with a lot of good Louisiana cooking, so we splurged a bit. Normally, I eat a very controlled diet.Boring, really, by most people's standards. But I feel like I need to do that in order to control my weight and to improve my health.An anniversary dinner is not the time to worry about things like that. I have to find balance between being disciplined and depriving myself unnecessarily.Given that I love Louisiana cuisine and the food is just awesome around here, it would be pretty easy to go crazy and just eat whatever I wanted. Pretty quickly, I'd gain another 50 or 60 or 70 pounds and my cholesterol and blood pressure would be through the roof.So that's not a great option for me. But it's almost as bad to worry excessively about what I eat. If I do that, I'll deprive myself of a lot of life's pleasures.I have to find a balance if I want to live an excellent life. If I want to flourish, I have to balance gluttony and unnecessary self denial. Pretty much everything in life is like this.The extremes aren't where you find flourishing. It's really in finding the middle ground that leads you to an excellent life.Although I suspect the idea of balance has been around long before Aristotle's time, it's really Aristotle who gets credit for the golden mean. That's the midpoint between the vice of deficiency and the vice of excess.To live an excellent life, a virtuous life, you have to find that midpoint, that golden mean. And we need to Be a little bit careful here, though.In Aristotle's sense, the term mean doesn't have the same definition as it does in mathematics or statistics.It's not about finding the exact middle between the vice of deficiency and the vice of excess, and it's about finding the balance point at which you flourish. That point may be different for everyone. The classic example is the virtue of courage.There would be vast differences between me, a college professor, and a first responder. A police officer who runs towards gunshots might exhibit the appropriate amount of courage, but that would be foolhardy for me.A similar concept exists in Buddhism. Buddhists call it the Middle Way. This Middle Way closely aligns with Aristotle's Golden Mean.As the story goes, the Buddha, who started out life as a prince, grew up in a life of luxury and sensual indulgence. He abandoned this and pursued extreme asceticism. I have no idea if I'm pronouncing that right.He starved himself and even practiced self mortification. He figured out that neither of these paths, these extremes, led to enlightenment.The Middle Way avoids both the physical extremes of a life of excessive pleasure and a life of severe self deprivation. It's a path of disciplined and mindful living that does not rely on either indulgence or punishment.This almost perfectly parallels Aristotle's Golden Mean. Other religious traditions such as Hinduism, Islam and Confucianism have similar concepts. All of these stress the importance of finding balance.Conceptually, this seems pretty easy to understand, and I think it matches the life experiences of most of us. The trick then becomes finding that balance point that takes three self awareness, reflection, and practical wisdom.To find balance, you need the self awareness to know when you're deviating from the virtuous mean. This sounds pretty easy, but in practice it's often fairly difficult. But you simply have to pay attention if you want to be able to find the mean.Did you go a little crazy and eat too much? Too often, were there situations in which a small indulgence actually would have enhanced your life?These are the kinds of things you've got to not only pay attention to, but also think about. It's not enough to just pay attention.You have to think about when you deviate from that golden mean or where that golden mean is, or perhaps how being out of balance makes you feel about yourself. If you don't think about these sorts of things, then you're not going to develop the third thing. Practical wisdom.In many ways, this entire podcast is about practical wisdom. Practical wisdom is the ability to make good decisions that align with virtue and to take effective action in complex and challenging situations.Practical wisdom not only requires knowledge, it also requires the ability to reason. When I go out to a celebratory dinner, I need to think through the various options and what's worth the caloric cost.For example, I can get just about as much pleasure out of sharing a slice of strawberry cheesecake with Tracy as I could from having an entire slice to myself.So both practical wisdom through the application of reason and the idea of the golden mean come together here to tell me I'm going to split a slice of cheesecake. It's excellent, by the way, the importance of finding balance isn't just some abstract philosophical concept. It's important in everyday life.One thing I struggle with a lot is the classic example of work life balance. My tendency is to work too much.It's not unusual for me to spend most of the weekend grinding away in my office, only to realize that I've spent almost no time with Tracy or the pups. The cats don't seem to care. But I like my work and I've come to expect a certain level of professional accomplishment. And that requires work.But to flourish, I need to do a better job of finding the balance point that's right for me and Tracy. I can't just work. I have to also live. Saving for retirement is another good example.If you focus too much on it, you may not spend money on things that truly enrich your life and don't materially affect your future financial stability. But if you ignore retirement savings altogether, you're in for a rough ride when you get older. A less obvious example is how we handle our emotions.It's clearly problematic to fly off the handle at every little thing, letting your emotions control your actions and relationships. But the opposite extreme, suppressing all emotional expression, always keeping a tight lid on what you feel is equally damaging.When we over control our emotions, we lose touch with valuable information about our values and needs and we often come across as cold or inauthentic. The golden mean here is emotional wisdom, fully feeling your emotions while choosing thoughtful responses rather than reactive ones.The importance of balance extends to almost every aspect of life. Time with others versus time alone, giving and receiving, being active and resting, logic and emotion, planning and spontaneity.The list goes on and on, but I'm going to give you one more one that's critical and not immediately obvious. You need to find a balance between thinking about and learning how to flourish and actually flourishing. This one really hits home for me.I love learning about and pondering the ways to live a flourishing life. It's why I do this podcast. But maybe I need to pay more attention to actually living one.To quote Marcus Aurelius, waste no more time arguing about what a good person should be. Be one. That's the ultimate balance. We all need to find the balance between contemplation and action. This brings us back to those three essentials.First, develop the self awareness to notice when you're off balance. Whether it's working too hard, suppressing emotions, or, yeah, overthinking instead of living.Second, take time to reflect on where your personal balance point should be, not where it is for others, but where it works for you. Third, use your practical wisdom to actually live the balance you've discovered.For me, that means sharing a slice of cheesecake with my wife on our anniversary. That was the right balance in my life, at least in that moment. Until next time, Stay excellent, my friends.I produce, live well and flourish because of my dedication to helping others live excellent lives. I don't accept sponsorships and I don't want your money. The only thing I want is to help you and others flourish.If you've received some value from this episode, please share it with someone that might also benefit from listening. The best way to do that is to direct them to livewellandflourish.com until next time.