The speaker at the commencement for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduation in 1998 offered the formula:
Life = Health+Family+Work+Free-Time
This is a balanced formula for life. Like three legs of a stool health, family and
work keep a life in balance. The top of
the stool is free-time. When a person
keeps life in balance, the free-time will be there.
Health must be kept in good condition to be able to serve yourself and
serve others. Health gives a person the
options to physically take care of themselves, to be able to serve others, and be
able to enjoy free-time in a greater variety of ways than if a person were in poor
health. Without health, the stool will fall over and a person will have an out
of balance life.
Family relationships, and I extend this to mean all caring
relationships, must be kept strong to keep hearts filled. Empty hearts will be as damaging to a person’s
health as any illness. Without family, relationships
with people who care, the stool will fall over and a person will have an out of
balance life.
Work must be done to serve yourself and others. Work is the investment of energy into survival,
the attainment of knowledge, the delivering of services or products that
benefit the person or a community. Without
work, survival may be in doubt and the means to get from surviving to a better
quality of life will not exist and the stool will fall over. A person will
have and out of balance life.
Free-time is earned by most people through work. Free-time is the result of the investments
that have been made through service to ourselves and to others. If someone is just working on survival, they likely
do not have free-time available to do what they chose. They are still working on creating a balanced
stool. If Free-time does not exist, the
stool may be balanced but there is no energy remaining for enjoying a persons interest outside of maintaining health, doing work and maintaining relationships. Work must be done to maximize free-time.
I have used this formula to keep my life in check. I categorize goals and tasks to make sure
they are in alignment with this formula.
Then, I extend the same concept to keeping the world in balance. We must maintain the health of the planet so
that all beings that we love and need can survive. We must work to keep the environment clean
and use our energy wisely. We must care
for each other, and this extends to all forms of life because all things are
connected. Only then will we have a
planet that we can enjoy with the free-time that we have.
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