Balance

Most of the vehicles move on wheels. Even aero planes use wheels during take off and landing. Modern wheel is an excellent piece of engineering efforts but for the driver of the vehicle the major concern about the wheel is its tire- pressure.

Whether you are driving a bike, car or truck, you have to maintain certain amount of tire pressure. This amount is a prescribed value recommended by the manufacturer of vehicle for common road conditions. If you violate the prescribed values and either under inflate or over inflate the tires, the result is-

- The vehicle will be unstable.
- Fuel requirements will not be economical in these conditions.
- The tire itself becomes more vulnerable to damage by internally or externally.

For most drivers, the tire pressure is never a big concern. All they have to do a routine activity generally coupled with gas filling action. This is just to stop the vehicle at gas station where ‘AIR’ is written. The attendant there will check the tire pressure and correct it, if required. The driver may not be aware of the technicalities or benefits of maintaining the correct tire pressure. Some of the drivers are even not aware of the values of correct tire pressure for the vehicle they are driving. Nevertheless, they maintain the balance consciously or otherwise by mostly driving within the prescribed limits of tire pressure. (Sometime for short durations, they may be driving out of limits unknowingly or otherwise.)

There are occasions where you purposely violate the limits. These could be when you are participating in the race or struck in extraordinary road conditions. You may try to go beyond the prescribed limits of tire pressure as an experiment since economy of the fuel may not be concerned in these cases. The results of your experiment will give ‘food for thought’ for designer of vehicles.

The facts about tire pressure of the vehicle are also applicable to the journey of our life.
To travel smoothly in our lives, we have to be in our limits (consciously or otherwise). For some of us, it is a natural process. They remain in limits even sometime without realizing it. The limits are generally socially/legally accepted values.
But for some of us, by the time we realize that we have crossed the limits, enough damage is already done.

If we don’t want to loose the balance in life, we should look for following indicators-

- Your efficiency is reduced. You have to spend more fuel (life force), then before for getting the same work done in same circumstances.
- You become less stable without a valid reason.

It is not very easy to catch the early warning signal for ‘loosing balance’ in-time always. Some issues in this regards are analyzed below-

1. Use the difference for your advantage- What happens when you get two different views of the same subject from two different sources? Generally the tendency is to consider only one view (on which you have faith) and discard the other. It is in this type of selection when we loose our balance and become one sided. If you are not convinced on this ,consider the following examples from our day to day experiences-
(a) Since we have two eyes, we see two different views of same object. Both of these views are processed by our mind to create a third view with the help of these two views. It is the newly created view by which we actually perceived the object. This new view is much better version of either of two dimensional views by which it is created. By using both views to our advantage, the dimension of depth is added which makes the view much superior in quality.
(b) Similarly we use our two ears to hear a combined sound of two different sounds reaching each of our ears. The new stereophonic sound is much superior in quality.
The key to achieving balance lies in the way we react on finding differences. The balanced view can be created by using two different views to create a superior quality view in our advantage rather than sticking to one side and discarding other completely.

2. Balance the outlook not the circumstances- You can not change the circumstances all the time even if you are Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte or Adolph Hitler. The element of uncertainty will always be there with circumstances, because the control is totally not yours. But you can change your outlook. How you consider the reality is totally in your hand. Balance can be achieved by giving equal respect to all stake holders on any issue and then arriving at a decision based on your capability, preferences and free will. The decision taken is to be reviewed when the circumstances demand it.

3. Balance is a natural state- Our mind has got wonderful processing powers which can suggest us the best reaction for any unknown circumstances we encounter. The problem comes when we are not able to acknowledge the signals given out by our mind due to fear, greed or anger etc. Our system is designed to achieve balance automatically. There is no requirement to achieve it artificially.

4. How much is too much? – We all get enough direct/indirect indications by our well wishers while we are in the dagger zone of crossing the limits to loose the balance. There can be no standard formula to calculate the exact limits. Each person and situation is unique. We have to find out our limits and honor these.