2.03: Balance: On Spinning Plates, Keeping Forward Momentum, And Preserving Heart In A Busy Life & World

In episode three of season two, Tim and Tuesday explore the often talked-about, always sought-for, and ultimately elusive ideal of balance. In our journeys to reach ‘success’ — to have the greatest possible impact for a better tomorrow — what can we bring to our daily life to protect and renew our energies today?

Together, Tim Merry and Tuesday Ryan-Hart are THE OUTSIDE—systems change and equity facilitators who bring the fresh air necessary to organize movements, organizations, and collaborators forward for progress, surfacing new mindsets for greater participation and shared impact.

2.03 —— SHOW NOTES

• Tues: I used to have a boss that would say she hated the word ‘balance’. She would say working moms were always going to drop balls, just make sure that one of the balls you drop is not your children. But sometimes you do. Just be human; sometimes you are going to drop all your balls.
• Tim: Family and care for family is a core principal of how we work together. It’s a non-negotiable.
• Tues: Have we equated balance with equal or equilibrium? Balance as a moving target is where we get the heartache.
• Tim: I’m not sure balance can be achieved without some kind of pivot point for things to move from.
• Tues: You could just unintentionally move through your life and get to your grave and say, “oh, is that how I spent my time/is that what I did? There is something around intention that at least naming what’s important that makes giving our attention so much more possible.
• Tues: While we may not ever reach this enlightened state of balance; we do know when we are out of balance.
• Tim: When we do our work, we talk about the need of striking a balance between just enough order so things can evolve effectively and enough chaos so that we are learning. It’s the whole Dee Hock work around the Chaordic Path.
• Tim: Just picking up some things here: 1. Clarity & Intention; and 2. Being in-tune with your inner guidance system. My hunger and thirst for balance is heightened by what I am experiencing in the world around me.
• Tues: I wonder if we are talking about two different things? Balance for me is where I put my attention, energy, action and time; it’s not that place of stillness where I think it’s okay. They are two distinct things for me.
• Tues: It’s hard to articulate because some of those pressures/expectations are so unspoken for women. The root of this word [balance] has to do with equity. Our experiences of balance are deeply impacted by our social position.
• Tues: Those of us who are targets of oppression probably get a really good sensitivity to that and see it more easily and more clearly and those of us who would benefit from an imbalance of equity clobber those feelings down.
• Tim: As a result of my class, family, access to wealth, nationality, race… I feel like from a pretty early age I was witness to a whole series of injustices [familial] and they increased in intensity into my teens. That’s a construct, in my life, of the education of the privileged classes. Through it all, I still knew what was just and what was not. For me, I knew what was right and wrong through my entire childhood. I really fought to protect this as a young man.
• Tues: We are typically really reinforced for not holding onto it [empathy]. I think it’s why people trust you with this equity work. You keep that awareness in your bones and it makes you trustworthy. Trauma tries to extinguish empathy. It’s about intention. We need to have an intention of being willing to see the pain in others.
• Tim: I want to acknowledge that there are people within the ruling classes, that recurrently over history, who have maintained that sense of justice despite the context they were raised in.
• Tues: Two important stances we bring to our work: when we are working with groups of people carrying this acknowledgement around the pain of injustice and lack of equity and that people have will and are working toward ending it feels like two important stances that we bring into our work. 

Song: “Motion Sickness” by Phoebe Bridgers

Poem: “Big Brown Dog” by John Fisher-Merritt, Organic Farmer & Poet

On Winter mornings I know

When my man is preparing to go outside.

He reaches into the closet for his coveralls.

I approach him eagerly, wagging my

Best tail wags, oblivious to tail pain as

I whack chair,

desk and closet door

You see

I have trained this wonderful

Smelling man

To throw his coveralls

Over my head,

And speak to me in an

Affectionate tone of voice as I

Revel in the ambrosial scent

Of his body odor.

Subscribe to the podcast now—in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anywhere else you find podcasts. New episodes will be available every second Tuesday. If you’d like to get in touch with us about something you heard on the show, reach us at podcast@findtheoutside.com. 

Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.

Duration: 40:51

Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good Studios

Theme music: Gary Blakemore

Episode cover image: source

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