Opinion: The quest for balance amidst strife

I've long believed that balance is the key to living. Balancing how we treat ourselves and others makes all the difference between harmony and discord.

Since March of this year, the need for balance has become more clear to me than ever before. Our initial responses to the coronavirus outbreak and the death of George Floyd couldn't have been more imbalanced if we had tried.

We've been reaping that harvest, and the results are in: Imbalance doesn't solve problems. It only creates more.

The Facebook live video that I watched in its entirety this morning on Carson Now, covering the protests in Minden Saturday, contained a lot of imbalance.

Not the coverage, but the subjects. Two sides constantly shouted slogans and platitudes at one another, some trying to yell others down.

Granted, yesterday's demonstrations weren't anywhere close to a shade of what has taken place in urban centers across America over the past two months or so; including the riotous behavior in downtown Reno back in June.

By comparison, the Minden event was considerably benign. I saw a lot of people impassioned about what they were protesting for or against, and many of them appeared to respect one another's personal space.

But the heat of the moment could still be felt through the camera lens, and words shouted between people grew more caustic and vitriolic as the video played on.

There were also a few noted altercations on the video feed. But, thankfully, there were people quick to intervene and shut them down before they went any further.

What I watched from yesterday's Minden protests only served to convince me of the imperative need for balance in a crisis; something that I further anticipate will only fall on the negligent ears of the prideful, the smug and the sanctimonious.

We should have learned the consequences of imbalance by now from points throughout human history; even as most recently as March, when our state's economy was shut down.

Nevadans have suffered substantial losses from that, and I expect we will continue to feel the repercussions of that imbalance for years more to come.

But we didn't learn. Instead, we continued to react with imbalance rather than respond with an even keel.

When the cell phone video of George Floyd's death went viral, people around the world responded with understandable anger. But that anger very quickly boiled over into a rage that has consumed a number of communities across the country.

Structures burned, stores were looted, and people got hurt. Some severely or critically injured. Others have died in the violence.

In recent days, the police body cam video of the George Floyd incident has also gone viral, adding new details to what the world saw in Floyd's final moments.

Before you jump to conclusions that I'm minimizing what Derek Chauvin did to Floyd, please hear me out.

A different perspective was gained with the availability of that video footage. A new and unseen point of view.

Will it change people's minds? I don't know. But it does make my point that we need balance right now more than ever.

If not for sanity, then at least for clarity.

We need to listen to each other much more than we have. That means communicating more with our ears than with our tongues.

The problem as I see it is that there's no dialogue happening. There's only narrative. The human Id demands the gratification of narrative and ignores the Ego's plea for discourse.

When all we want to do is hear our own voices and talk at others, we are already imbalanced.

We should all learn to listen like the deaf, who spend more time cued into others so that they can understand and communicate through sign or lip reading.

Collectively, though, we aren't doing that. We hear only ourselves, but not each other.

Neither side of the contentious issue brought to the fore by George Floyd's death seems particularly interested in reaching an understanding.

They don't have to agree on the topic. But they really should be trying harder to agree to disagree.

On my way home from work Friday, I listened to the 1991 hit song "Meet In the Middle" by Diamond Rio play on the radio.

My favorite stanza in those lyrics goes like this:

"I'd start walking your way
You'd start walking mine
We'd meet in the middle
'Neath that old Georgia pine
We'd gain a lot of ground
'Cause we'd both give a little
And their ain't no road too long
When you meet in the middle"

The center of a fulcrum point is the only spot on the plane that doesn't shift in weight.

Balance is critical.

But listening to a song preach balance is much easier than practicing it.

Balance requires careful, deliberate thought and action. It takes work, damn hard work, and grit to see it through.

Freedom requires balance. So does liberty. If those two principles of our Constitutional Republic are going to be preserved, secured from usurpers, then the People must practice a little more self-control than we've been doing lately.

Self-regulation, or self-restraint, is the only way to achieve the balance that the scales of justice demand.

Some humility and following the Golden Rule helps, too.

Either that, or our society will continue falling prey to the consequences sung about in "The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond":

"ye'll tak' the high road, and I'll tak' the low road,
And I'll be in Scotland a'fore ye,
But me and my true love will never meet again"

The high road takes a lot more work; but up there, you can see everything much more clearly than down below.

Yet, too many people these days show that they are choosing the low road, because it's much easier to yell at and intimidate each other, shame and bully one another, than it is to swallow our pride and work a bit harder to take that high road.

I see this on the Left, the Right and even in the Center.

Balance doesn't fit the narratives we want, and we see compromise as a bad word these days; one seemingly defined as weakness.

Well, in my experience, sometimes it can take more courage to be the only one seated at the discussion table than to take a side and stand on it.

What I watched from Saturday's Minden protests were some people consumed with the sort of resentful anger that can lead very quickly and easily to rage; the kind that has engulfed our country for the past several weeks.

And what have been the results of that rage? Violence, destruction, even death.

Anger is a natural human emotion. But in order to strike the balance that's such a critical part of maintaining human civilization, we must control our anger.

Or else, as Master Yoda so aptly put it to young Luke, consume us it will.

"Anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering," the little fella instructed his Jedi apprentice.

If you have ears, listen, to paraphrase Jesus Christ.

Because there's something important in light of all of this upheaval that we need to hear. And it's probably not coming from our own voices.

****

On a very personal note, I'd like to thank Carson Now Reporter Kelsey Penrose for her willingness to walk amidst the protesters and record the 14-minute video.

For those of you critical of Kelsey's coverage, you're entitled to your opinions of course, but I worked with her when I was reporting for Carson Now.

She's a dedicated community news journalist who's willing to jump in and cover the hard stuff for her hometown.

Admittedly, that's something I was always reticent about doing. I doubt very much that I would have been in the middle of Saturday's protest like she was.

It's no small thing for me to say that I have held a great deal of admiration for Carson Now's product since it began a decade ago. I believed in it then, and I still do today.

Small town, community news journalism at its very best happens right here in Carson City.

I had often felt like the odd duck in a profession that, in my lifetime, has seemed to attract considerably more liberals than conservatives. But the folks at Carson Now never made me feel that way.

Least of all Kelsey.

They were all very supportive of me. Carson Now was there for me when I was struggling at the lowest points in my life, and I will always be grateful.

And to Kelsey: Your video prompted me to write this column. Thank you.