Back in the early days of the pandemic, I wrote an essay on Balance.  In it, I used the visual of a pendulum instead of a two-pan scale.  Balance, I encouraged you to think, is a dynamic process (like the swinging of a pendulum) and not a static process (like perfectly balancing the weights on a two-pan scale).  The goal, I wrote, is not to achieve some nirvanic state of perfect balance, but to keep the amplitude of the swings to a minimum.

I’ve been noodling a lot on balance, again.  In that earlier essay, I was writing in the context of balancing precautions around exposure to the COVID virus with the need to keep our economy moving a bit and not isolate people too much.  This time, I’ve been thinking more about pendulum swinging.  Why do people seem to drive to extremes so easily?  And how can we dampen that swing to keep the pendulum oscillating more gently around the middle?

I think back to my time living in Mexico.  Since I lived about two hours from the Mexico City airport, guys from the plant where I worked were kind enough to drive me there when I needed to travel.  I lived in Central Mexico, which is clearly the most perfect place on earth.  High enough in elevation to never get too hot; southern enough to never get too cold.  Home were neither heated nor air conditioned.  But what that meant is that drives to the airport on cool winter mornings were an exercise in temperature extremes.  We’d be driving for a bit, freezing, when I’d ask the driver to turn on the heat.  He would turn it on full blast at the highest temperature setting.  After sweating for a while, I’d ask him to turn it down.  But he would turn it off.  There seemed to be nothing in between.  We’d alternatively freeze and sweat for the two-hour drive.  I’m sure, on average, the temperature in the car was comfortable.  But the swings of temperature were not.  The pendulum swung way too wildly when a nudge here and there would have worked much better.

I am a fan of the Art of the Nudge.  Maybe it’s my background as a synthetic organometallic chemist.  When you are trying to measure out exact milligrams of something, you learn to nudge.  Maybe it’s my evolving skills as a cook (not unrelated to my background as a chemist).  When you are cooking, it’s better to nudge the temperature, not cycle between full-on heat and off.  Nudging—small adjustments—work better when you are trying to approach an optimum.  These types of small adjustments also tend to work better to create lasting change.

There is a Japanese concept called “kaizen” that we would all do well to embrace.  This is the practice of making small changes.  Once a small change becomes engrained, you make another small change.  Little by little, you end up with a big change.  There are two advantages to approaching transformation with this method.  The first is that by absorbing small changes, you have a better chance of making them stick.  The second, of course, is that you avoid swinging the pendulum too far and too fast.  Dieting and exercise are two areas where we tend to be pendulum swingers.  When you approach a change in your diet (with the goal of losing weight) by eating restrictive fare, it is not uncommon to lose a bunch of weight and be miserable in the process.  Once the weight is off, too many of us swing the pendulum back to all the foods we love which packed on weight in the first place—and guess what happens?  Making small but permanent changes to how you eat is an example of kaizen.  A two-week juice cleanse is not.  Similarly, I’ve certainly experienced epiphanies around exercise.  I will place a significant expectation/burden on myself around how much I work out and how many days a week such that I either burn out or hurt myself.  Then I end up back on the couch again.  Small changes have a better chance at sticking.  And once you’ve engrained one small change, then you can decide if you want to take on another.

Managing those pendulum swings is easier when you are managing a change within yourself.  Sure, we all get impatient, or greedy, and push that pendulum too far.  We, alone, must deal with the backlash of the swinging pendulum which hopefully encourages moderation.  And many people go through their entire lives swinging from one extreme to another, so “easier” does not mean “easy”.  The real difficulty, though, comes when a change you might be pushing for—a movement of the pendulum to a different balance point—affects others.

Those who push for big changes usually come from one of two camps:  those highly unhappy with the status quo and those who just like to create chaos.  I have some compassion for the former.  I get highly irritated with the latter, so we’re just going to ignore them for the purposes of this essay.  Humans, generally, don’t like change.  We like life to be predictable, within boundaries, because it feels safer.  We like where the pendulum sits and we tolerate only minor swings around that balance point. If you are reasonably comfortable with the status quo, you will generally resist change.  If you are unhappy with the status quo, you will generally push for change and the amplitude of your push is proportional to your unhappiness.  If you are unhappy, you don’t see the current status of the pendulum as swinging gently through a balance point.  You see it as way off balance and want to give it a big push in the other direction.  (“Perspective” is another good “P” word.)  Living in a pluralistic society means that there will always be people who agitate for change and people who are happy with things just as they are.  I would argue that the benefits of living in a pluralistic society are worth it, but that’s a discussion for another time.  (Or maybe never, since my instinct is not to touch that one with a 10 foot pole!)

We have, however, absorbed a stunning amount of change if you view life over a longer time line.  As one example, I am stunned at the advances in LGBTQ+ rights and recognitions in my lifetime.  In fact, just look at how the term itself has evolved!  First, it was about “gay rights”; then “gay and lesbian rights”; then “LGBT”; now “LGBTQ+”—and in many instances even MORE letters that strive to include other marginalized elements of the community.  That does not mean there has not been regression or backlash (two steps forward, one step back).  Each time the term was expanded, each time the pendulum was nudged, there was pushback and it certainly continues today.  But the overall trend has been bravely forward and society is absorbing that change.  In fact, everything that agitates us today has probably been much worse at earlier times in human history.  As a big fan of the Outlander series of books, I have started watching the series on Starzz.  I can only watch it during the day, though, because the degree of violence that was typical of the 1700’s keeps me up at night.  Does that mean that we are done evolving?  No.  Does that mean that all these societal changes have been happily accepted by all?  Clearly not.  If you are the person agitating for change and pushing on that pendulum, remember that small changes are still good and you need to play the long game.  And if you are the person resisting change, try to understand why the status quo doesn’t work for the person pushing the pendulum.  It’s ok to push back a little to moderate the swing but not, generally, to stop it all together.  We all want balance, but it’s a dynamic process.  Just small swings, ok?