Origin

When I was in elementary school, the playgrounds were still allowed to have teeter totters made out of wood that went more than a foot high.  My friends and I would play on them all of the time, but after awhile we got tired of just going up and down.  We especially got tired of the person on the other side jumping off when they were at the bottom and they were at the top!  We would do a free fall drop and land hard on our rear ends (probably the main reason for the change in design over the years).  So, we started to find creative ways of playing on these playground devices.  We would each take a teeter totter and stand in the middle with one foot on either side of the middle bar.  We would then bring up the low side slowly and attempt to level off the board.  This took some serious practice because if one side starting going down too quickly, it was hard to stop the momentum.  If you were able to stop it, it took so  much force that it was difficult to stop it from continuing to the other side and having the same problem again.  After a lot of work, we finally got the hang of it and could bring the teeter totters to balance in the middle.  We could even bring one side down on purpose and bring it back before it touched the ground.  I found this far more rewarding the bouncing up and down with the constant threat of being 'cherry bombed'!

Since then, as I have grown up, I found this to be a great analogy to my philosophy on life.  It is much easier to stay on one side constantly battling up and down against someone else on the other side, but there is always the risk of being dropped and hurt by someone else.  I have found it much more rewarding to look for the balance between the extremes and keep myself from going all to way to one side or the other.

This is what this blog is about.  Finding the balance in the middle.  How can I (or we) find the balance between extreme ideas to find solutions that are palatable to everyone, if not desirable to everyone.