Glimpsing Balance

My eyes started to open to what balance truly meant the last weekend I spent in Europe. We spent our last Friday night in Germany as a project team drinking and meandering through Bremen, Germany. We strolled down the cobblestoned streets of the Schoor, tossed back a few at the Ratskeller, and then headed down to a small bar on the water front to drink some more and toast our successful implementation. As I sat there drinking with my friends, I realized the Continental way of life was fundamentally different than life in the States: stores closed at 6:00 pm and only opened one Sunday out of the month, dinner typically took two to three hours, and work got left at work.

My reality was jarred further when after three hours of sleep, I headed for 36 hours in London. The first thing I noticed was that London was much more like America than Germany. The pace was faster, stores were open later, and it was a lot less relaxed than Bremen. The juxtaposition made me realize that maybe our American way of life is too fast paced and maybe I needed to slow down and enjoy life a little more.

I spent two incredible days exploring the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and the streets of London. I realized several things during those magical days that helped bring me a little closer to finding that elusive thing called balance:

• A visit to Churchhill’s cabinet war rooms made me realize that although there is some truth to American’s perception the Brits wouldn’t have survived without us, what we fail to realize that if the Brit’s hadn’t persevered, hadn’t sacrificed, and hadn’t hung tough, there wouldn’t have been any war to win.
• A trip to the Tower of London, opened my eyes to the fact that a lot of people lived and loved and died long before I was born and people would continue to live, love, and die, long after I was gone. Although the technology that inhabits my daily life may be different, the basic human needs, wants, and desires are the same. The struggle to find balance is universal.
• Despite being built as a monument to God Almighty, for me Westminster Abbey was a monument to all that is good about humanity. It’s a monument to creativity, to hard work, and a belief in something greater than yourself.

I wish I could say that I returned to the States and my life magically changed into something more balanced. Looking back, I’m not even sure that I realized at the time that I had changed and that the almost imperceptible change in perspective that came about after that trip would help me get a lot closer to understanding what balance was.