The Search for Balance

The Search for Balance

Shouldn’t it be the highest aim of society and government?

Image by Manfred Antranias Zimmer from Pixabay

Balance has fallen victim to globalization.

The last time I was in Cairo with my husband, I dragged him and two nieces through the bazaar looking for the perfect statue of Maat. You know her? If you don’t, you probably want to.

Maat was the Egyptian goddess representing truth, justice, order, and balance. Everything we’re missing in the world today, where you feel like you’re sliding just getting out of bed in the morning.

But she was not just a goddess — she was a principle.

She was also daughter of the sun god Ra, so there’s that too.

And, not least, she presided over the judgment of the dead in which the heart was weighed against an ostrich feather.

Order arose out of chaos at the time of creation and it was the job of the king to maintain it.

Now you might see where I’m heading with this.

Anyway, back to the bazaar. It used to be you’d find beautiful, colorful, well-made figurines of all the Egyptian gods and goddesses. But where are they when you need them?

We searched all the little shops, but the best we could do was a lumpen sitting figure who looked like she was suffering from depression, and honestly, who could blame her?

Further scouring led to the discovery that the figures were no longer made in Egypt. Balance, truth, justice, and harmony have been outsourced to China.

Well, shit.

I finally purchased a sitting figure made of pure basalt (ha! Resin painted black) who now presides over the bookcase in my office, which frankly could use more order.

She is a focal point for me. If you can’t ensure balance and harmony for eternity, what good even are you?

Image by Canva

That’s her with the wings top and bottom, although mine is sans wings.

Shouldn’t balance, order, truth, harmony, and justice be the very aim of society and governments? Shouldn’t those qualities govern our own lives?

In a time in which the old (rules-based) order is being broken down, when needed structures are being discarded, when government is no longer providing what is expected and was elected for, when “kings” serve their own interests rather than the collective, it is time for a reset.

Have you heard any politicians campaigning on balance? On creating a solid, lasting foundation? Do preachers talk about making your heart light as a feather or do they stoke division?

Our societies are splintered. Individually we stagger about, unsure which way to turn, what to do. Our attention is hijacked to where we are no longer clear in our heads. The opportunities that existed before are vanishing.

The new opportunity is a wider vision. Creating what lasts through balance, and the stabilizer is the horizon of eternity — for the individual and for society.

Here is what the ancients whisper: “It was a time when the world stood still for eternity to overlap with it and the energies intermingle.”

If only we stood still from time to time to let eternity cross our paths.