Different balloons pushing around, getting bigger or smaller, all filling the jar of life.
Over the last couple of weeks, through the twists and turns of business and family, I have been trying to visualize and express what equates to contentment in my life. Yes, it is a pretty big subject for a small brain like mine. But it has been really difficult to explain to people where my fears and happiness come from. After weeks of torture, I have come up with some metaphors for life contentment from the right and left side of the brain.
Popular culture has created a mythology around right and left brain people; lefties are more logical and righties more creative. Whether this is wholly true or not, I am not sure. But I know certain explanations have a greater resonance for me depending on my perspective. So here goes-
For right brain creative people I offer life as a jar full of balloons. The first law of the balloon jar theory is there can be no empty space, no vacuum. There will always be a balloon in the jar that expands or contracts to fill the space. The second law is that all the balloons can expand and contract. Finally, you can add or delete balloons as your life grows.
Each balloon represents a different part of your psyche and the jar represents the possibility of a full life. The biggest balloons are our need for food, shelter, and safety (ripped right out of Maslow’s triangle). But there are other balloons in the jar as well such as the need to love, be loved, self-esteem, self-confidence, etc. There are also balloons that we want to keep deflated like fear, loathing, insecurity and hate.
When the balloons that keep me happy start to deflate, by law, other balloons must inflate so there is no empty space in the jar. For instance, when I am not feeling very successful in my job the balloon of insecurity starts to inflate. Week in and week out, we all have balloons that are in motion, part of our emotions. If there is a vacuum in the jar because no balloons are inflating, we have serious problem, real depression sets it. The jar starts to collapse in on itself. Consequently, we are always looking for ways to keep the happy balloons inflated, which in turn keeps pressure on our ‘un-happy’ balloons to stay small or deflated.
The left brain logical approach entails a less creative mathematical function;
Life = ½(3x + 5y – 2z…….) Where the letters x, y, z,…n represent different inputs (food, security, loathing, love, hate, etc.) in our life, similar to the balloons (ok, I made it look overly algebraic and complicated for fun).
The bottom line is that the result, Life, must be a positive number. Just like the balloons, the inputs can change day to day. It is imperative to keep the z from getting too big (remember we are subtracting it in the equation). If z gets too large, or any combination of negative variables, it overwhelms all the other inputs and you have a negative output, less than zero Life. Have you ever been there?
So where does this all go. I am not sure. It is a starting point to get your arms wrapped around your particular life situation. A couple times in the last several weeks I have had a vacuum in the jar or negative Life output. It is not fun. So I suppose the next time you see me, you can ask me how full are my balloons or if my Life function in yielding a positive result.
May you always have big happy balloons and a tiny little z’s.