When we think about balance, we often think of it as being something that we attain. Like, one we have it, we have achieved balance, and now we’ll always have it. Here’s the thing about balance though – balance isn’t something that’s attained, it’s something that’s maintained. We don’t just get it and then have it, we get it, and then it must be maintained.

Consider for a moment, a person riding a bike. We first learn to ride a bike, and keep our balance so that we can stay upright. As we learn to ride further and further, we start to take on different challenges. We may decide to ride longer distances, we may decide that we want to learn to jump, do tricks, or ride on trails. We may ride in urban traffic, or we may ride on difficult trails. Each of these different riding situation requires us to maintain balance in the face of an environment that is always trying to throw us off balance.

If we’re riding in an urban setting, there will be traffic, weather, potholes, and other people. In the case of mountain biking, there will be rocks, dips, hills, ruts, even animals. There’s the constant of gravity that both helps keep us balanced, and pulls us downward when we learn too far to either side. We have to maintain speed and approach different features of the environment with different strategies and tactics. We may need to speed up, slow down, adjust our pedals, pick a different line, and avoid sudden obstacles.

All of this is to say that once we learned to ride a bike, we didn’t attain the balance needed to stay upright. Rather, we learned to maintain balance in that situation. As we continue to challenge ourselves, we learn to maintain balance within those contexts as well. There’s almost always something trying to throw us off balance when we ride.

The same holds true for our lives. Balance isn’t something that we attain, and then we’re good. We must maintain that balance. That may mean leaning further into something or adjusting our approach from time to time. It won’t always be the same. We may need to speed up sometimes, and we may need to slow down. Just because it doesn’t look the same as it did before, or just because you know something is going to have to change, doesn’t mean it’s still not balanced. As long as you’re trying to keep things balanced, it’ll happen. Keep at it. You may fall from time to time, but that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. You can get back up and keep riding.