Balance Is the Threshold - The Way of Phi in Practice -

Keep Your Eyes on the Road and Your Hands upon the Handlebar

Dear  friend,

Surfing is one of my favourite metaphors for Dynamic Balance.

However, since not everyone is used to catching waves on a board, let's explore a more relatable metaphor: biking!

Learning to Ride a Bike

 

When we learn to ride a bicycle a lot of balancing is involved.

When I learned, a lot of falling was also involved.

That was how my dad taught me.

That the falling was a necessary part of learning. 

Decades later, when I taught my children, there was a new and clever invention: the balance bike.

This is like a regular bike, but without pedals.

Instead of pedalling, the riders run, while mounted on the bike and steering with their hands.

As they develop their sense of balance, they learn to lift their feet and roll for a while, gradually extending these rolls, and eventually they have mastered balance. And once one has mastered balance, transitioning to a regular bike, with pedals, is easy.

Using a balance bike, my children didn't fall very much. Hardly at all, actually.

Taking Balance to the Next Level

Once we have mastered riding the bike, we enter the world of bikers.

In this world, things like balance and steering are taken for granted. Those are taken for granted.

Prerequisites to enter the club, so to say.

However, that is not where it ends.

On the contrary, that is where a whole world of adventures opens.

Cruising with the air in our hair, gazing to the horizon, feeling the earth rush by beneath us.

As we have mastered balance, we naturally start lifting our gaze and soon realise that there are others just like us, riding around on their bikes.

Only While Moving

One last detail worth paying attention to:

Biking only happens when there is movement.

No matter how skilled we get, we cannot ride a bike while standing still.

Even someone who can balance a stationary bike like a world champion... is not riding. That's performing a trick.

No, to ride, the bike must be moving.

And almost always it is moving forward, which is the Linear in a nutshell.

However, the Circular is also represented by the wheels (even a unicycle has one).

And then, there is the Balance, which we have already explored.

That leaves only one last piece: The Dynamic.

And this, my friend, is something that each one of us must discover on our own terms.

Until next time, pay attention to…

…where you're going,…that you’re the one holding the handlebars,

And remember:Balance isn’t the end goal: it’s the beginning of a greater adventure.

With gratitude, 

Christopher