“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

― Albert Einstein

The search for perfection runs deep.

Here’s how it goes: there’s a particular set of conditions that will deliver the ideal state – the perfect person, location, architecture, career, body, food and so on.
It’s a mistake. There’s no such thing as lasting perfection in the relative, ever-changing world. Looking for a static mix of perfect factors is a search for non-change in a world of constant change. It immediately leads to controlling behaviours because once you land on the perfect combination, you need to lock it in. Don’t change. Stay as you are. It’s like trying to stop a river from flowing – exhausting and impossible.
 

True perfection is a result of perfect balance.

Rather than using precious time and energy to keep things, people and/or circumstances the same, we need to use our attention to stay alert to what’s actually happening. That means get good at adapting to the ever-changing world rather than trying to enforce a fixed and rigid status quo.
 

We find perfect balance through experience.

It asks us to tune in to how we feel. Rather than other people doing our thinking for us, we need to pay attention and through trial and error we find the ever-shifting sweet spot. To think there’s a formula for eternal perfection is to think that you can learn to ride a bicycle by reading a book.
 

There’s no recipe for finding balance.

To find balance, you need to get on the bike and learn from personal experience. You have to find balance in the face of change. The wind is blowing this way, therefore you have to shift your position. The terrain is changing and so now you need to change gears. The angle of the surface you’re riding on shifts and so you have to move the position of your body.

Perfect balance is an ongoing process of adaptation. Moving forward is key – if you stop and try to hold a particular position, you’ll fall off.