"balance" is a crutch word.

i petition you for forgiveness right now, because a philosophical rant is forthcoming, which is unusual, but only when considering that it's coming on a saturday afternoon, a time of the week not known for cerebral activity. anyways, a bit of a primer is probably in order. a word becomes a crutch word when it meets two critera, 1.) it is used way too often, and 2.) it's used in a context where another word would be markedly more adequate. a crutch word is different from a buzz word, but the difference lies more in degree than in type. i've noticed that words i classify as crutch words became crutch words because they were buzz words before.

maybe, i'm going off because i think balance is a stupid word, but then maybe i think it's stupid because it's overused, and subsequently misused. most of the time i hear it used in some sort of ontological context, attempting to manage any number of intangible entities. balance has a connotation of equality, it, in fact, presupposes equality. the trouble with that is that in our lives, more often than not, seeking equality between the disparate intangible entities is not a worthwhile goal, and in fact, is not a goal that is actually sought at all. we don't want equality, we want things given appropriate priority, if everything was equal, balanced, the resulting disequilibrium would in fact cause more problems than "balance" is ostensibly supposed to solve.

on top of that, using the word in that context leads to compartmentalization. instead of seeing life as an integrated whole, we learn to see it as disparate parts, and have no problem justifying actions in one part of life that contradict values held in another, it leads to congnitive dissonance, dissonance we often justify based on the idea that the parts are disparate anyway. perhaps more problematic is the idea that balancing is a solitary act, done solely by an individual.

i've gone on long enough.

feeling: dizzy
thinking of: turning the A/C on
music: "zzyzx scarecrow" stavesacre