I first heard someone say, about two and a half years ago, that we should be shifting away from talking about the work-life “balance” toward work-life “harmony.” The speaker was talking about self-help books, and spoke of it as a trend in this genre. I’ve been musing on this statement since, but I haven’t really seen the shift she was describing. Maybe I just don’t read enough self-help books, but the term “work-life balance” still seemed to be pervasive. I even titled one of the chapters of my book “My Perfectly Balanced Life.”
Then, just two weeks ago, I heard another speaker say, “Maybe instead of balance, we should be focusing on harmony.” There it was again.
And today, an article on a website to which I subscribe was titled “Finding Harmony for Women in Medicine.” It was a typical article about how hard it is for women in the workplace to feel like they have performed as well as they should in all the aspects of their lives. There was no9 explanation as to why the author chose “harmony” over “balance” for the article, so I thought I’d have a go.
Picture “balance” as a scale, like the scales of justice, with two aspects of your life in the two dishes. Maybe it’s a career and a role of parent. Perhaps it’s caregiver and artist, or activist and volunteer. If you place more weight on one side, then to achieve balance, you must necessarily increase the weight of the other. Someone who values and invests heavily in his or her career would have to increase the weight of importance in their private life in order to achieve balance. I don’t think this is what is meant by work-life balance.
A better visual symbol might be a seesaw, with two aspects of your life on either end. If one end is heavier than the other, then the seesaw tilts. Balance can be achieved by placing equal weight on both ends or by shifting the heavier weight closer to the center fulcrum. If you think of the fulcrum as “self,” then those parts of your life on which you place greater importance, acquiring greater weight, will have to move closer to the self, leaving the other parts of your life, in balance, yes, but further away from the self. If weight is forcefully applied on one end, the object on the opposite end of the seesaw can be catapulted off!
So I see the limitations of talking about work-life balance in this way. Balance may not be the end result we want if it is achieved by limiting parts of ourselves or adding more and more weight. Not to mention that my two metaphors require one to picture only two roles when many of us have multiple roles to play in our lives.
Then, what is harmony? How best to illustrate it?
A well functioning ecosystem exists is harmony. Each of the inhabitants—plant or animal—has a role to play in order for the whole to exist in its fullest capacity. Birds help pollinate the plants which provide shelter for larger animals which fertilize the soil for more plants to grow. When left alone, Nature exists in perfect harmony.
Another way to think about harmony is with music. When each voice or instrument sings or plays their part, the whole can be magnificent. If you have ever sung in a choir, you know the feeling of contributing to this whole. Your one voice matters, but you have to listen to the other voices around you and blend yours in order to create a harmonious sound. Sometimes one voice may take the lead while the other voices support it in the background, but the whole should resonate.
Work-life harmony might be something like that. Each role in your life has a purpose and should fit into the whole. If one function of that life is too prominent, the whole is disrupted and that loud voice stands out from the choir that is your life, and the part of your life that has been neglected cannot be heard.
How does one achieve this kind of harmony? By listening carefully to your life to see if it is humming along harmoniously. If not, if one voice is too loud or too soft, make subtle changes and keep listening. Your body, your heart, and your head will tell you.
Or you could read some self-help books!
So in the second edition of my memoir, maybe I’ll change that title to “My Perfectly Harmonious Life.”
One Response
Excellent article.