Outta Whack!
How do we get back into fine whack?
“Outta Whack” is a slang expression that describes something wildly out of balance or out of adjustment. A definition I read states that it is the opposite of the now-obsolete term, in fine whack, which meant “in good condition” during the nineteenth century.1
There is so much in the world around me that feels ‘outta whack’. There seems little-to-no understanding of the power of balance, what it can look like, and how it benefits us. This was reinforced when I heard this story recently.
The speaker and her husband lived in Ghana in the mid-1990’s. He was an engineer at a mining operation, and they lived in the housing set aside for the managing class, who were primarily from Western developed countries. In order to make them feel comfortable, they had green lawns around their homes.
A local teenager was hired to cut the grass. She explained that he used a machete in smooth motions to trim the lawn to a perfect height. Over the years, she came to know this young man and helped him as she could. She maintains a relationship with him today. He is a well-educated executive at a gold mining operation in the same location at which they first met.
The now middle-aged man who has a wife and several children and more than two advanced degrees (I can’t remember all she listed off) recently came to visit her in the U.S. Midwest. They had a wonderful time, and he called when he landed at the Ghana airport to say he had arrived safely. He was calling before he began the trip to his home.
She explained that when she and her husband lived in the area, it would take six hours to drive by car from the airport to the mining operation. Over the last 25+ years, there have been significant changes in how mining operations are conducted. Today, it takes two days to travel from the same airport to the same mining area, because the roads have not been maintained and repaired.
As I sat in the audience, I could see, in my mind’s eye, a whirlpool of greed and contempt growing stronger as the regard for life and care for the communities were diminished. The drive to pull more and more gold and minerals out of the area had sucked out more and more resources needed to support the infrastructure.
I imagined poor mining practices leaving waste and destruction behind to such a degree that it caused ripples to crack the road and lift it up in rubble. Yes, dramatic, but for me, a strong image of what happens when taking so much in a destructive manner causes a natural order response of removing sustenance and resources from another location or process.
This is a small example and only my visceral reaction to a story of change. However, it reaffirms the undeniable dynamic of Nature and Life to seek to right imbalance in the most life-affirming way possible. Not perfect; nothing remains perfectly at balance for all time. It is a range of beneficial circumstances that flow and ebb.
For example, let’s look at balance in relation to two very basic and important factors in everyone’s life:
Hot - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Cold
Wet - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Dry
Consider Hot/Cold from the perspective of the locations in which we live. Each location has its own range of temperatures. We often choose our home based on this range. Few people live in locations with temperatures outside the range suitable for habitation. Those that do, such as Eskimos and desert nomads understand the nature of their environment and take care to accommodate the extremes. They take actions to balance the extremes.
Most of us know we need water/Wet to live. We know too much water/Wet will destroy us and the natural world. We can say the same for Dry. As a gardener, I know there is a sweet spot for rain and no rain during my growing season – a balance. Every environment has its own sweet spot of the most beneficial timing and amount of rainfall. It is all different, and it can change with season and over time. However, we know that balance in this factor of life is important. It makes the difference between a pleasant, productive life and one with greater hardship and risk.
The point here is that we tend to like balance in these two factors of our lives. Most of us don’t expect to live in a fictional Camelot where “The rain may never fall till after sundown. By eight, the morning fog must disappear.”2 It’s real life and it’s messy but we hope for the balance to prevail so there is minimal destruction.
This train of thought brings me to question the balance in my lifestyle. How am I contributing to the ebb and flow of life so that I keep from the hurtful extremes? Can I understand if a choice I make is life-affirming or if it reflects fear and greed causing harm to the natural order?
The key is to keep the process in balance and not make myself completely nuts. It is holding to a true and loving intention to support Life – what is living and regenerative instead of grasping, controlling and limited. For me, I agree with Terry Brooks’ character, Angel Perez who said: “You can hope for a world in which living things flourish – not one in which they are systematically destroyed.”
