Flexibility and Wisdom (Balancing) – Tool/Technique 4

Menanteau Serfontein – 17 June 2021

M. Scott Peck, an American Psychiatrist and Author, wrote the Book entitled “The Road Less Travelled” which contains important principles about life that I have found extremely useful.

The book focuses on Peck’s core belief that, as stated in its opening sentence, “Life is difficult,” and that its problems can be addressed only through self-discipline. What makes life difficult, is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one.

Peck refers to the following four Tools/Techniques to deal with suffering and the means of experiencing the pain of problems constructively, which he calls “Discipline”:

Delaying Gratification (dealt with in the 1st Article)
Acceptance of Responsibility (dealt with in the 2nd Article)
Dedication to Truth (dealt with in the 3rd Article)
Flexibility and Wisdom (Balancing) – (dealt with in this Article)

They are simple tools and almost all children are adept in their use by the age of ten. Yet, presidents and kings will often forget to use them, to their own downfall. The problem lies not in the complexity of these tools, but in the will to use them. For they are tools with which pain is confronted rather than avoided, and if you seek to avoid legitimate suffering, then you will avoid using these tools.

This is the Fourth and Final Article of the Four-Part series analyzing each of the four Tools/Techniques.

Hereafter, we shall examine in detail, the will (the driving force) to use these Tools/Techniques, which is Love, i.e. What is Love, What it is Not and its Role.

Please note that almost all of the content of this Article has been transcribed verbatim from Peck’s Book.

Tool/Technique 4: Flexibility and Wisdom (Balancing)

The exercise of discipline is not only demanding, but also a complex task, requiring wisdom, flexibility and good judgement. Courageous people must continually push themselves to be completely honest, yet must also possess the capacity to withhold the whole truth when appropriate. To be free people, we must assume total responsibility for ourselves, but in doing so must possess the capacity to reject responsibility that is not truly ours. To be organized and efficient and to live wisely, we must delay gratification daily and keep an eye on the future. Yet, to live joyously, we must also possess the capacity – when it is not destructive to act spontaneously – to live in the present. In other words, discipline itself must be disciplined. The type of discipline required to discipline discipline is what Peck calls “balancing”.

Balancing is the discipline that gives us flexibility. Extraordinary flexibility is required for successful living in all spheres of activity. Peck uses anger to explain that to function successfully in a complex world, it is necessary for us to possess the capacity not only to express our anger, but also not to express it. Moreover, we must possess the capacity to express our anger in different ways, depending on the circumstances.

Mature mental health demands an extraordinary capacity to flexibly strike and continually restrike a delicate balance between conflicting needs, goals, duties, responsibilities, directions, etc. The essence of this discipline of balancing is “giving up”. The act of giving something up is painful. As we negotiate the curves and corners of our lives, we must continually give up parts of ourselves. The only alternative to this “giving up” is to not travel at all on the journey of life.

It may seem strange, but most people choose the alternative of not travelling at all on the journey of life and elect not to continue with their life journeys – to stop short by some distance – in order to avoid the pain of giving up parts of themselves. If it does seem strange, it is because you do not understand the depth of the pain that may be involved. Giving up in some instances is the most painful of human experiences, e.g. giving up of personality traits, well-established patterns of behaviour, ideologies, and even whole lifestyles. These are major forms of giving up that are required if one is to travel very far on the journey of life.

We all have to do deal with many “crises” or critical stages of development in life, e.g. a “mid-life crisis”. What makes crises of these transition periods in the life-cycle, is that in successfully working our way through them, we must give up cherished notions and old ways of doing things and looking at things. Many people are either unwilling or unable to suffer the pain of giving up the outgrown which needs to be forsaken. Consequently, they cling, often forever, to their old patterns of thinking and behaving, thus failing to negotiate any crisis, to truly grow up, and to experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity. Peck lists some of the major conditions, desires and attitudes that must be given up in the course of a wholly successful evolving lifetime:

The fantasy of omnipotence (i.e. the fantasy of having unlimited or very great power)
The dependency of childhood
Distorted images of your parents
The omni-potentiality of adolescence (Omni-potentiality is the idea that as an individual we are living in complete freedom. Therefore, youth feel as if they are living among a world of infinite possibilities and they have the ability to transform another’s life or perhaps even the society.)
The “freedom” of un-commitment
The agility of youth
The fantasy of immortality
Authority over your children
Various forms of temporal (worldly) power
The independence of physical health
And, ultimately the self and life itself

It is in the giving up of self that human beings can find the most ecstatic and lasting, solid, durable, joy of life. And it is death that provides life with all its meaning. This lifetime is a series of simultaneous deaths and births (of self). “Throughout the whole of life, one must continue to learn to live and throughout life one must learn to die.” It is also clear that the further you travel on the journey of life, the more births you will experience, and therefore the more deaths – the more joy and the more pain. Peck says that the spiritually evolved person is masterful in the same sense that the adult is masterful. The spiritually evolved individual is an extraordinarily loving individual, and with his/her extraordinary love comes extraordinary joy. Spiritually evolved people, by virtue of their discipline, mastery and love, are people of extraordinary competence, and in their competence they are called on to serve the world, and in their love they answer the call. They are inevitably, therefore, people of great power, although the world may generally behold them as quite ordinary people, since more often than not, they will exercise their power in quiet or even hidden ways. In this exercise of power, they suffer greatly, even dreadfully. For to exercise power is to make decisions, and the process of making decisions with total awareness is often infinitely more painful than making decisions with limited or blunted awareness (which is the way most decisions are made and why they are ultimately proved wrong.)

The best decision-makers are those who are willing to suffer the most over their decisions, but still retain their ability to be decisive. One measure and perhaps the best measure – of a person’s greatness is the capacity for suffering. Yet the great are also joyful.

A final word on the discipline of balancing and its essence of giving up: you must have something in order to give up. You cannot give up anything you have not already gotten. If you give up winning without ever having won, you are where you were at the beginning.

To briefly summarise, discipline has been defined as a system of tools/techniques of dealing constructively with the pain of problem-solving in such a way that all of life’s problems can be solved – instead of avoiding that pain. The four tools/techniques are:

Delaying Gratification
Acceptance of Responsibility
Dedication to Truth
Balancing (Wisdom and Flexibility)

Discipline is a system of techniques which are very much interrelated and can be utilised simultaneously. The strength, energy, and willingness to use these techniques are provided by love. The concept of love will be elaborated on in the next Article.

Please note that almost all of the content of this Article has been transcribed verbatim from Peck’s Book.

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