Why is it hard to find the middle path, and why it will always give us reason to stress out

The extreme Paths

In most choices, the extreme paths are always well defined. You could either have the path of extreme abstinence, where you deny yourself all worldly pleasures and live like an ascetic. Or you live the hedonistic life, full of excesses and indulgences, with little regard for the future or for the people around you.

The first path is extremely hard for most of us to attain. We may understand what it means to be an ascetic, we may even experience it ourselves for brief periods of our lives. But to live our entire lives like the Sages may just not happen for most of us.

And if I am to be entirely truthful, maybe I just don’t want to be a Sage! Maybe I do enjoy my worldly pleasures a little bit too much. I do enjoy the taste of a nice cold glass of beer just as much as I enjoy a thrilling sunset over the Arabian Sea. And I love the taste of a hot dum biryani just as much as I enjoy meditation. That doesn’t make me a bad person, does it?

I do know that I do not like stuffing my face until I explode with biryani. I remember the feeling of the morning after 10 beers well enough to not exceed my self-imposed two beer limit. But these things are easy to understand… what about my other choices? How much time should I spend with my loved ones? How much money should I spend on myself, and how much on charity? How much time should I spend reading, and how much in writing? There are so many questions like those, where do I find the middle path there?

The Middle path

Imagine you’re alone, walking down the middle of a road, which is miles broad. There’s no traffic, or streetlights. It is twilight, and the rain is starting to come down in a steady drizzle. From where you are, you can just about see the left and right edge of the road that you walk on. But where are you? Just how far away from either edge are you? Can you really tell, in the gathering darkness, whether you should be a couple of feet closer to the side of asceticism? Or can you go a little closer to the side of hedonism, and still be OK? What the hell is OK, anyway?

In everything we do, most of us are always trying to find the middle path. The extreme paths are easy to identify, but they are often unsustainable, or impractical, or both.

Take money, for example. You could live like a miser, and save every penny that you earn. You would deny yourself every single pleasure that you can doubtlessly afford, only because you have decided to be a miser. Or you could choose to spend every penny that you earn, and some that someone else earned too. Both extremes are easy to define.

For most of us, extremes are the easiest ways to define ourselves in terms of what we are not, the negative of what we want to be. But what do we want to be? How do we want to lead our lives?

That is truly the million dollar question. Because what we are looking for is that elusive middle path. But if you’re walking down the middle of a broad road in the period of perpetual twilight, you’ll never know for sure whether the path you are on is “middle-enough” or not.

A similar problem can be seen with health, fitness and diet. We know very well what the extremes are, and at the same time we know that we’ll never get to the fitness levels of a Serena Williams or a Usain Bolt. But neither do we want to be a couch potato! We’re always looking for the middle path. But how much is enough? Should I have 2 meals a day, or 5 small meals spaced out? Is exercising 3 days a week overkill, or can I do more? Can I allow myself one glass of red wine a week, or two? Oh god, so many choices! All these choices are giving me anxiety!

You could say to yourself, “I should be happy with the choices that I’ve made. I’ve got my fitness plan and I stick to it more than 3 times a week, and I don’t overexert myself, and I’m managing my job and my house and a partner, and everything. I’m happy! I’m on the middle path.” And that will work well until the moment you meet someone who’s doing way much more than you are, and the anxiety returns with a bang.

The elusive middle path is a recurring source of anxiety in our lives. On some days we keep trying to find it and it simply slips and slides away from our grasp. On other days we effortlessly find our middle path, and pull away at a steady clip, maybe even finding the energy to help someone else who is struggling. But how do we reconcile ourselves with the strain and struggle that walking this path entails?

Your Middle and Mine. Yesterday’s Middle, and today’s

Every person’s middle path is going to be different. Each one of us has gone through a unique set of circumstances; we’re walking around with a unique set of beliefs… An infinite series of ever-changing inputs which we bring to bear on every single output — decision — we make. People aren’t going to have all the input variables the same all the time, so their outputs will vary. Even for those who are making the same decision today as they did yesterday might be doing so for entirely different reasons. And maybe what were good and sensible decisions yesterday aren’t good and sensible today, because something else has changed.

So it is perfectly acceptable if I meditate while my friend hits the gym, as long we are both keeping fit. I’m happy choosing to drink a couple of beers, while my friend has chosen to be a teetotaler. I’m happy making the choices that I’ve made, because they help keep me on the middle path. My middle path.

Everybody has their own middle path

For every person who buys a house, you can find someone who thinks it more prudent to rent. Neither of them are taking an extreme position — each is finding her middle path. And they both sleep peacefully at night, convinced that each has the better end of the bargain.

But you need some people who are making the decision to rent, and others who buy, for a marketplace to survive. If everyone thought that life is better in the US, for example, and decided to move there, there would be no one left in India or China! If everyone thought that the world needs more doctors, and no one chose other professions, society as we know it would collapse!

But it is because each person is finding her own middle path that this world continues to function.

I hope you enjoyed this article!