Balancing Act

March 1, 2021

Balance is one of the most important skills we must learn in our lives. It's so important that usually within the first year of life a baby starts working on achieving balance. First by learning to sit up on their own. Then eventually by stand up on their own. Then by walking. The baby achieved balance through a series of steps and stages. It didn't happen all a once but through steady and constant progress balance was found. It's on that subject I would like to talk about today. Balance in all aspects of our lives.

In the last five or six years, some of the most popular tech products require the use of balance. The first product we saw that was strange and different was the Segway scooter. Then remember a few Christmases back the hoverboard that every kid wanted and a many parents scrambled to find.

More recently personal electric scooters like Bird and Lemon are in almost every major city. The thing that all of these products have in common is that balance is achieved using tilt sensors, and gyroscopic sensors.

The popularity of these products derives from the fact that when using any of them there is an interaction between the rider and the machine. Slight changes in your balances cause these products to react. For instance when you lean forward a barely negligible amount Segway scooters and hoverboards interpret your movements using the sensors and begin moving. The more you lean forward the faster the devices move. If you lean back it slows down. If you return to zero or perfectly balanced the device stops altogether.

I share these technological tidbits and reminders about babies walking because these lessons are physical examples of what we must work to achieve on our journey of mental health. It is essential to have balance with our mental state. Too much of any one emotion or feeling becomes an overload. Not enough thought or attention paid to an issue and that is an issue as well. So we have to act just like the tilt sensors and gyroscopic sensors that serve the function of maintaining balance in tech devices. We must constantly strive to know when we are operating in an unbalanced state. We must also be like babies. A baby's strong desire to find balance and walk is equivalent of what we need to be looking to emulate. Balance is not something we perfect at a young age, it is something we seek for all of our lives.