Blog 2156 – 09.11.2021

Balance Brings Peace

They say that it is important that we eat a balanced diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables, grains, protein, etc. but, what of a balanced life with equal parts, work and play, food and exercise, planning and execution? Sometimes those balances are precarious, as when we feel a compulsion to finish a task even though the doing so might and often does throw our lives out of balance. Driven men and women get ahead they say, but at what cost? The first casualty of imbalance is peace.

Our drive to accumulate wealth and power is the root cause of all warfare. Despite all the noble and patriotic sounding reasons for war the true reason behind all wars is money and the power it wields. During my war, Vietnam, there were hundreds of thousands of U.S. military personnel in country in 1970 when I pulled my tour, but there was an even far greater number of U.S. civilian contractors there working at reaping rewards from an oil and mineral rich country. Little was said about that, but far more about defending democracy, fighting Communism there so we would not have to fight it on our own streets. Over fifty thousand of our own dead and over 2.5 million of theirs and finally like the French before us we left Vietnam to the Vietnamese. I read a few years later that the Vietnam War created more millionaires in the U.S. than there had ever been up until that time. I am sure our twenty year involvement in Afghanistan has created even more.

Heroic acts happen during war time as do atrocities. Most people agree that war profiteering is a crime and yet not just the military industrial complex profits from war but many others from farmers to businesses rebuilding all that is blown up and destroyed in war time.

This out of balance world is spinning out into oblivion some think, but it is we not the world who are to blame for letting our lives, our priorities, our world get so out of balance. Many He-men, and She-women laugh at meditation, yoga, and even at vaccines, and wearing masks or condoms to protect their equally fragile bodies from disease, but out of balance thinking can become famous last words as too late truth prevails over out of balance reporting and the thinking encouraged by it.

I heard a young man say yesterday, “No one is going to make me get a vaccine, wear a mask, or tell me what to think. Somebody is already telling him what to think. He learned that from someone, some place. He certainly was not born thinking that way.

The more adamant we are against something the more we should see that as a signal that perhaps we need to restore some balance to our perspective. Fox News use to have a program that was called Fair and Balance which, though I only watched it a few times because I had a friend who swore by it, seemed neither fair nor balanced to me.

A diet of just your favorite foods is probably never going to have the scales reading fair and balance. Most children would skip the vegetables and go straight to dessert if allowed. Balance in life is always a precarious proposition, but we need it if we are to be at peace with ourselves, others and this planet we call home.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IfcxZG6VfHF62gfkLKqt055S2ccSYU4P/view?usp=drivesdk

Peace From The Music Machine