Alignment <> Balance
Writing a newsletter became an endeavor to me during the South by Southwest of 2018, the genesis of News From Futuro. While revisiting the first issue, I’ve realized that despite contemplating several of the perspectives that marked that year, I did not write about one of the experiences that has truly changed me.
“Talk About Time: Why We Fail at Work-Life Balance” lecture by Dr. Dawna Ballard, Ph.D., an expert in chronemics — the study of time as it is bound to human communication.
The lecture made me rethink, better yet, give up my search for balance. That does not mean I started looking for self-help: I precisely wanted criticism. I have always been uncomfortable with the word, “balance”. As a researcher of qualities and subjectivities, I never believed in the binary sovereignty of balance, in which there is only one direction with basically two possibilities: if you are not balanced, you are out of balance.
Dr. Dawna Ballard’s studies approach technology and its ability to build our subjectivity. How does language technology constitute our relationship with time? The meaning of the words we use to refer to measures and ways of experiencing time shapes our relationship with it. And time, let’s face it, is the most precious resource that we have.
The cognitive dissonance resulting from the idea of balance contributes to the guilty feeling of not being able to properly “balance” your day. Balancing something, Ballard explains, means separating the pieces and quantifying them, as if on one side (and within some hours) there’s the “professional life” and on the other, the “personal life”. The research reveals that people think they have “failed” to achieve a balance between work and personal life when, in fact, what they really did was to experience life as it is. During a pandemic, it can become a big slog full of experiences and possibilities throughout the workday.
As “no one likes to feel like a failure, especially people who are very successful and expect to have control in their lives”, she recognizes, in the concept of alignment, an alternative to the idea of balance. A different word and, furthermore, a new route possibility that can help to build a healthier and less frustrating relationship with time.
Unlike the scale, horizontal and wobbly, the image of alignment is in consonance with the vertical body. The term conceives the idea of gravity, earth and sky, and more precisely “from head to toe”. In addition, the elasticity of the vertical axis allows some misalignment over some issue in your life (professional or personal) without compromising your entire alignment. The researcher proposes an exercise to the audience: she asks everybody to write down every possible activity that can help us achieve alignment, going through the day, week, month, and year on a sheet of paper.
My list of the week: walking the dog, doing pilates, stopping for lunch, cooking my own food, drinking tea, chatting with people, meditating, taking a shower, etc. On several days, delivery saves, meditation is replaced by coffee and alcohol. Okay, it’s part of it. Just because I was unable to accomplish the things that make me feel aligned doesn’t mean I am misaligned. She highlights that, through the process, having the list at hand and looking at it from time to time is an exercise that helps to create memory and habit.
Understanding language as a human technology, ready to change and evolve, is key in order to empower ourselves with its capacity for transformation. So that, just like updating an application, it is possible to embody a word and its meaning into everyday life, expanding our perception, improving self-care, reducing anxieties, and, above all, conceiving joy and new ways of being in the world.
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{01} Chronemics
According to the Encyclopedia of Special Education, Chronemics includes temporal orientation, comprehension, and organization; use and reaction to the pressures of time; our innate and learned awareness of time; whether or not to wear a watch; arriving, starting, and ending things late or on time. It sums up the way we value and perceive time, it also plays a substantial role in our communication process. The use of time can affect lifestyles, personal relationships, and professional life. People from different cultures generally have different perceptions of time and that can lead to conflicts among individuals. Different perceptions of time include punctuality, interactions, and a willingness to wait.
{02} Alignment
Of all the meanings I’ve looked up in the dictionaries, the one that really seemed appropriate to me was the one from the Merriam Webster dictionary, which refers to the idea of alignment as a “work in progress”, and as “the proper positioning or state of adjustment of parts (as of a mechanical or electronic device) in relation to each other’.
The description highlights the idea of matching different parts that go far beyond simply personal and professional life, it is about a myriad of possibilities that requires your care and attention.
{03} Language is like testosterone
Philosopher Paul B. Preciado specifically speaks about the technology of language, as well as how the construction of language itself is a matter of survival in his interview for Folha de SP. Going to the heart of the construction and production of subjectivity, recognizing the power of its materiality that performs in reality, Preciado mentions that “the work that is done with language is also done in the body, in subjectivity. Language is a technology of production of subjectivity. For me, there is no big difference between language and testosterone”.
For those who have been thinking about language, Paul Preciado brings good news. For him, an epistemological transformation is underway.
“A true revolution of the meanings and the models of the heteropatriarchal capitalism representation, which is collapsing nowadays. The mutation of the predominant model generates “the implosion of all signified and signifiers. The words we use are apparently the same, we apparently speak the same language we learned, but those words and that language no longer have the same meanings as before”.
Twitter Bots
Speaking of language, here’s a tip: two Twitter bots that create short stories and poems from artificial intelligence, and, mainly, promote the possibility of language production:
@spacetravelbot was created by @hologramvron, it tweets small synopses of space adventures, based on the game Traveler.\
@MagicRealismBot inspired by writer Jorge Luis Borges, from a random blend of academic characters, mythical creatures, and philosophical disputes, stories are created every two hours by an automation process.
Chinese philosopher Yuk Hui, in a very well-conducted interview by Ronaldo Lemos, talks about diluting the universal meaning of technology, affirming that the path for dilution is based on complexity, diversity, and multiplicity, overlapping the normative shortcut of rationality.
Fireball : Visitors From Darker Worlds -
Werner Herzog deciphers the cultural importance of meteors in an absolutely sensational and exciting production (as usual). A documentary that follows “the footprints” of the main meteors that hit the Earth more than 60 million years ago, and unveils the infinite possibilities of the cosmos from the space dust. A thrilling combination to me: outside, but also within Herzog’s works, the crossing between science, Oppenheimer and other poetics, with an artistic look at a viscerally true narrative.
The title transcends the language. The groove of the strong talented troupe formed by Larissa & Ynaiã & Érica & Desirée #NãoRepareABagunça. Add it to your playlist at the end or at the beginning of your day, depending on when you wake up.
