A Balanced Diet for Eating and for Living

My inbox often includes several newsletters featuring breaking news, stories, ideas, and special offers. Too busy to read them in detail, I tend to scan for items of personal interest such as health and fitness. 

Sometime this turns out to be a super-duper diet plan or fitness regime or both – and then a few issues later yet another, supposedly better idea pops up. 

But one piece of advice that seems to persist is to eat a balanced diet.

Simple as that sounds, there are at least two major problems with it. Firstly, we do not have general agreement about what “balanced” means. Secondly, there can be obstacles to following it. To mention just a few of these: confusion, misinformation, lack of resources, and social pressure. So it isn’t as easy as it sounds, but still we try because we know that balance is a worthy goal.

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Every day brings the chance to be balanced, and not just in our food and health habits. Ultimately this idea of balance serves as general advice for living in a healthful, wholesome way.

We hear a lot these days about life-work balance, generally thought to be a modern concern, prompted by our hectic times. As I have recently learned though, it is not a new concern, with the idea itself originating in the mid-1800s through the discipline of anthropology. The phrase “work-life balance” wasn’t used until the late-1970s in the UK and the mid-1980s in the US.

When I learned that this kind of balance isn’t such a new idea after all, I realized that it coincided with industrialism, mechanization, and technological advancement. It seems that, as our material lives have advanced, so has the tension between work (on-the-job time) and life (the rest of the time). The irony is that money — as the material outcome of work — has not brought the free time that might help us become more balanced.

Sometimes I feel like I’m back in math class, trying to balance an equation!

Looking further into the “life” part of this equation, I see many aspects of life that need to be balanced. We need to take care of ourselves physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. We need time to be alone as well as with others. We need time to relax, have fun, and enjoy arts and culture. We do not want to be continuously driven to produce concrete results or meet other people’s expectations.

Discussing these ideas not only from an individual perspective but also at a global level, Abdu’l-Baha told us about the future in this excerpt from the Baha’i magazine Star of the West: “Moderation, without which the truly balanced life is impossible, is a vital feature of the civilization now dawning upon humanity.”

In 1947, Shoghi Effendi wrote through his secretary in a letter to an individual that Baha’is “… believe in balance in all things; we believe in moderation in all things …”

Both quotations support the idea that moderation is integral to balancing. As in the balanced diet approach to food, all components should be present in moderation to achieve the best outcome. This discussion is similar to exploring the balance between science and religion. Both have value, but if not balanced we can find ourselves trapped in either materialism or superstition.

Looking at the larger trends within our current society, we can see many signs of our being out of balance. These include debt from excessive materialism, deadly conflicts and wars, deteriorating health and morale, harmful prejudices, extremes of poverty and wealth, and human-caused climate change. A spiritually enlightened society would not tolerate these unjust – and unbalanced – conditions.

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How do we overcome these ills of imbalance, which have resulted from immoderation and injustice? It begins with the individual. The Universal House of Justice has explained the reciprocal relationship between individuals and society:

If an individual violates the spiritual laws for his own development he will cause injury not only to himself but to the society in which he lives. Similarly, the condition of society has a direct effect on the individuals who must live within it.

Clearly, my own conduct, lifestyle, and social interactions will have a cumulative effect on me and on my culture. As I strive for moderation and balance with other people and with the planet, I will grow healthier, as will my community. Since a healthy community values the wellness of everyone, it will have a positive influence on yet other communities.

There is no better plan, no super-duper scheme that will be announced in next month’s newsletter. We already know what to do. It may take time, but we can do it — if we stay balanced.