Refreshing a previous post – 5 Balls of life

Original Post title: Check-in – August 25 – Juggling the 5 balls of life

I’m rewriting a post I first wrote in 2017 because I finally understand what I couldn’t then. Back then, I copied a commencement excerpt, pasted it into my blog, and convinced myself I understood balance. I didn’t. I understood the metaphor, but not the cost. I understood the words, but not the fracture. I understood the idea, but not the physics of what breaks and what bounces.

I would caution you that as intelligent and active participants in a dynamic society like America, you must bring balance into your lives. Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them — work, family, health, friends and spirit — and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls ~ family, health, friends and spirit — are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.
You live in a world of growing opportunity at one of the most exciting times in history, and you have been prepared with an exceptionally fine education. Because you are all so well educated, let me pose this final question to you. What is education for? Is it for the pursuit of knowledge or for the pursuit of significance? How you answer makes a difference.
Knowledge is merely a tool. There is someone in Argentina or Singapore who has the same degree as you. The difference lies in how you use it. Will you use your education for life or just as a living? It‘s up to you now.
Brian J. Dyson
commencement address at Georgia Tech (1996)

Dyson said work is rubber and the rest is glass. I nodded along. I agreed. I thought I understood. But I didn’t understand anything until life made the metaphor somatic. Until the glass cracked. Until the universe raised its voice. Until my body told the truth before my mind was willing to listen.

The “I didn’t know yet” honesty - recognition and acknowldgement aren't the same

The hip adductor injury in 2023 wasn’t just an injury. It was a hinge. A shrill. A moment where endurance pacing stopped being a strength and became a warning. I had been running, biking, swimming, traveling, producing, performing — mistaking motion for balance, mistaking resilience for sovereignty, mistaking productivity for presence. Work always bounced. I assumed I would too. But glass remembers impact.

I wasn’t juggling five balls. I was juggling labels. Each with its own contour, weight, demand. Some inherited. Some self‑assigned. Some masks I didn’t know I was wearing. I kept all of them in the air because I thought that was the point. I thought dropping anything meant failure. I didn’t understand that dropping the wrong thing meant fracture.

The present lives between two fairy tales — the past and the future.

Eddie Pinero said it, but I lived it. I was depressed in the past and anxious in the future. I was living in both fairy tales at once. Peace only ever showed up when I stayed in the present long enough to feel my own breath. The present is the only place where the glass realms can be protected.

The acknowledgment that the tools weren’t built yet

My journey of reasonable self‑scrutiny didn’t exist yet. Not in the way it does now. I didn’t have the internal architecture. I didn’t have the virtues integrated. I didn’t have the cosmology. I didn’t have the somatic literacy to understand what my body was trying to tell me.

Wisdom, Temperance, Justice, Courage — the Stoic virtues didn’t arrive as philosophy. They arrived as necessity. Wisdom became the lantern I carried when the fog thickened. Temperance became the bridle on the storm when my reactions wanted to outrun my intentions. Justice became the calibration I needed when I was carrying too much or too little. Courage became the gate I had to walk through alone, even when my hands were shaking. These weren’t virtues. They were guardians.

I needed a term for my worldview. A label for the architecture I was building. Something that could hold my authentic core values, my faith‑oriented philosophies, my Stoic trajectories, my nuclear family, my physical and mental values, my time management, my endurance identity. I needed a cosmology that didn’t collapse under its own weight.

The imbalance becomes visible

Work kept bouncing. I kept traveling. I kept swimming, biking, running with too much freedom. I kept mistaking motion for presence. I kept assuming my partner would understand the pace I was keeping. I kept ignoring the other balls. The Four Agreements helped — not as doctrine, but as calibration. A reminder that my worldview needed to be lived, not performed.

And then there was the theft in San Francisco — a moment that disrupted everything. I had just returned from a run. My backpack was gone. I followed protocols. I stayed calm. I made sure my wife knew I was safe. But in the empty moments — the ones without movement — my mind drifted into fear. Job security. Safety. Fragility. The glass felt thin.

But before the theft — before the disruption — I had been on the beach. Sand under my feet. Shoes off. Running barefoot among strangers, seagulls, birds, the waning light. Grounding. Self‑care. Reasonable self‑care. Being selfish where I could so I could become more selfless. I remember the sunset. I remember the warmth. I remember taking photos for a family visiting from somewhere far away — the father finally in the frame. I remember feeling aligned. Present. Connected to the glass realms I had been neglecting.

And then the disruption. The shattered glass. The displaced things. The realization: my computer is gone.

Work could have shattered everything. But I didn’t let it. I stayed in front of it. I ran again the next day. I acknowledged what I could control and what I couldn’t. I parsed the information reasonably. I navigated the stress. I let it go.

That moment grabbed me by the shoulders. It stabbed my heart strings. It reminded me that work will always bounce back like rubber, but the others — family, health, friends, spirit — are at high risk of fracture. So I shifted from hyper‑focus to balanced focus. Until the hip injury. And now I’m here again — juggling a different set of balls. It doesn’t matter what they are. It matters that I get them back in balance. Before the universe turns the noise into shrill screams.

Sometimes it just clicks — like swimming. Work keeps bouncing back. It always has. All the way back to Carl’s Jr. But the glass — the intimate things — they were close to shattering. I was slipping. I was losing discipline. I was letting external things disrupt my demeanor. I was doubting the basic truth that most humans are trying to do good.

I didn’t go over the ledge. I stayed rooted in my moral standards. I stayed honest with my wife. I stayed present enough to see the fracture forming.

And now I’m rewriting this post — not to perfect it, but to tell the truth I couldn’t tell then.

I lived the metaphor. I broke where I didn’t expect. I bounced where I didn’t deserve. I learned what I couldn’t have known in 2017. And I’m rewriting now because the glass remembers.