We hear this idea of finding balance in our lives. I've come to think of this analogy as a precarious image. The balance is delicate; when too much is added to one side, that side tips and demands something to offset the imbalance and restore equilibrium. The image of a balance seems to be unstable, chaotic, negative in some way.

Recently I've thought of balance from a more dynamic growth perspective. In Charlie Munger's Poor Charlie's Almanack, he introduces this idea of 'circles of competence'. These are areas of knowledge in which Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have achieved a comfortable level of competence. They stay within their circles, but work on expanding the circle's boundaries.

This expanding circle image is stuck in my brain, leading to an idea of human lives as circles, in which we each have a centre point where we feel grounded. Within this circle is the cumulative sum of our life experiences. As we push and extend these boundaries, say in terms of work or relationships, we recognize when we approach a limit, so we return to the centre, to a comfortable grounded state, but our boundaries are now expanded, and the circle's total area - our experience - is at a greater capacity than it was before.

I finished reading Nassim Taleb's Antifragile. The last part of the book looked at how the consequences of the financial crisis were shifted from those in the least fragile position - those who had a lot of upside (highly paid, bailed out) and no downside (no repercussions for financial crisis) - to the general public (taxpayer money). I closed the book feeling not great. But then I thought about Viktor Frankl's Man Search for Meaning and how he wrote about his years in concentration camps without any bitterness, and I felt grounded again. There are things we are uncomfortable with, they make us question, they make us face injustices and the negative. It is these things that expand our tolerance for the world in which we live.