“Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls…are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”
James Patterson
Beyond the Quote (14/365)
When you’re young, you only have one ball to play with (no juggling required): the family ball. Your family is your lifeline and they do all of the juggling for you (those were the days, eh?). As you grow older, you slowly start to gain more and more responsibility and you begin to accumulate more and more balls that you eventually need to start juggling. Next might be the friends ball, then the school ball, then the integrity ball, then the health ball, then the work ball, then a family ball of your own, etc., and this continues until you reach your juggling limits and can no longer properly keep all of the balls suspended in the air. Either something has got to give and one (or more) of them drops, or you stop adding more balls and you get better at juggling the ones you already have.
What’s important to denote, however, that Patterson doesn’t mention, is that there can be more than one work ball and more than one friends ball in the mix—but there will only ever be one family ball, one health ball, and one integrity ball. Some people work more than one job, some have side hustles, some pick up overtime, etc., and each of those additional loads adds another ball. Some people have childhood friends, some have school friends, some have work friends, some have activity friends, and each of those friend groups adds another ball to the mix. Each work ball that you add is still made of rubber and each friends ball that you add is still made of glass. Now you can see, maybe more clearly, how the juggling act of life can slowly become more and more overwhelming and hard to keep up with.
So, take a moment and do inventory. Which balls are you juggling and which balls have you dropped? Is your health where you want it to be? Are you spending enough quality time with your family and friends? Are you living honestly and with integrity? Of the ones you have dropped (if any) how bad are they damaged? What do you have to do to pick them back up? Do you feel like you’re at your juggling limits? How might the idea of the rubber ball help you re-adjust and better balance out your juggling act?
Read Next: Pico Iyer Quote on Leading A Balanced Life
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