A Balancing Act
Life as a whole is a balancing act. Without balance everything seems to topple or collapse in on itself like the death of a bright star. That dying star could just as well be me or you reading this. This concept of balance is not one that should be regarded lightly as it is something that hides in the undercommons of our everyday life. Everything must be balanced.
In life, there are different things we prefer to do. There are things we would rather do. This can be anything from preferring to watch television instead of doing your homework, but, obviously, it is still important for you to do your homework. You subconsciously balance things, but that is because you feel obligated to do your homework; something you might not feel so obligated to is something as simple as eating dinner with your family.
Most of you who actually have read this far probably love debate and love every little skill and friendship you’ve made whilst involved in the activity, and that is a valid feeling. But, even though you probably prefer to practice or talk about debate, you should never collapse in on it. Just because something is more fun or preferable does not mean that you should only seek that feeling. If you were to live life focused on a couple of things that you really enjoy, you would be doomed to a one noted life. Balance provides the stability to engage in multiple things, but if you only were to focus on or you only cared about debate then you would find yourself lost in other aspects of your life. You begin to lose out on time with your family, your friendships begin to suffer, and, perhaps most importantly, you lose out on other experiences.
Experiences are something necessary in everyone’s life, and these experiences can arise from even the most mundane situations such as that dinner with your family that your mom called you downstairs for. Those basic experiences are the moments where you’ll meet a new friend, gain a new perspective, learn something new, or reconsider past choices. If you still do not understand why those things are important, they’re all applicable to the debate world.
In the debate world, in every single event, there is a level of critical thinking required to succeed, and your critical thinking skills and the way you think can all be greatly affected by the experiences you have. Experiencing a variety of different things allows you to recall personal experiences inside your debate rounds. You will gain a better understanding of different concepts if you give yourself a chance to experience those concepts in the real world. You can draw inspiration for new arguments or sub-points from the things you see throughout your experiences.
Most importantly, to me atleast, is the fact that I probably won’t be debating competitively when I am sixty five years old, but I will be thinking back on all the different things I had the opportunity to experience when I was young, and one of those things will be all of the debate tournaments I went to and all the friends I made, but that’ll be one short memory. I’ll be thinking of all the other things I had the chance to experience too, and I’ll remember both things equally; they’ll be balanced in my mind.
Overall, I feel like this might be a little scattered, but the idea is quite simple: just make sure to balance your life because you don’t want to lose out on some of the feelings or experiences that influence and shape the rest of your life.