The dictionary defines balance as a state of equilibrium or an equal distribution. In our lives balance is essential to the well-being of the human race. Now more than ever we are aware of this. It has come to our attention that we are overusing earth’s natural resources and throwing off the balance. If we continue to overuse and abuse without replenishment, we will surely run out of those imperative natural resources.
We can think of mother earth as a living organism that needs to be in balance in order to sustain the life upon it. That life upon earth needs water to survive. If the water is all used there will be an end to life. Life on earth needs a certain amount of sunlight. If we humans distort that which is allowed to shine onto earth there will be an end to life. There has to be a balance.
Salmon Rushdie in his story The Harmony of the Spheres introduces us to Elliot. Elliot has diagnosed himself with a “simple biochemical imbalance”. (134) His symptoms seem to point at paranoid schizophrenia. He often refuses to see his closest friends believing that they are Martians. He is also visited by spirits and has been picked up by the police for driving in the wrong direction with a blindfold on.
Elliot is thought by his friends to be brilliant. “Between attacks he is perfectly normal.” (130) He is a published author of a book studying occultist groups in Europe. He claims to be open-minded. He is best friend to Khan, the narrator of the story. Khan was introduced to his wife Mala by Elliott.
After Elliot takes is own life, it is Khan who sorts through his personal belongings. In doing so, he gets an inside look at Elliot and learns just how unbalanced he truly was. It seems Elliott was thought to be jotting down notes for his next book, but in reality those notes were merely “hundreds of pages of operatic, undirected obscenities and inchoate rants against the universe in general”. (143)
In those papers, Khan finds fantasies about his own wife Mala. It seems Elliott had a thing for Mala. His own wife Lucy writes it all off to Elliot being “sick”. (143) Khan suspects Elliott was ill because he spent too much time in the spiritual world. He had not balanced his time well.
This story demonstrates to us the need for balance. We have a man seriously out of balance who takes his own life. Are we as humans taking our own life by destroying our planet? This is something to consider. Perhaps we were headed in that direction and have now seen the error of our ways. Is it too late or are we just in time to restore balance? Maybe we can lean things in favor of mother earth and then live harmoniously as one human race.
3 comments on Balance is Necessary
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Some say that it is too late...that the balance has already tipped too far in the wrong direction. Others say that we consider ourselves to be too powerful...that the earth will always abide and we are the ones who will die off. Most of us never really understand how huge the earth is and how miniscule we are. But I think we are definately causing harm to the earth and we have to do something about it now.
I wish that someone would have told us how serious this really was 20 years ago. There were some who did try...Al Gore was one. But no one wanted to listen because of the almighty dollar. Now those people are old, white-haired men who look around bewildered and try to blame it on something else...or else they just refuse to accept it as truth. We have had unbalanced people running the world for a long time...hopefully the new generation will do what we failed to to...pay attention to the real world around us and see what our responsibilties truly are.
:)
We need to elect some people who are truly concerned for the environment and not themselves. If we can do that, then we can fix this thing.