Juggling and gambling

I can't really remember the first time I heard about the story of the balls. However, I do remember the last two times I was reminded of it. The last time came by way of a friend posting about it on Facebook just about the time before something life-changing happened to another friend. Previous to that, I certainly remember a one-on-one I had with the immediate past Dean of the U.P. College of Engineering where towards the end of our meeting she asked me about life. She was serious when she related the story of the balls that we juggle in life. And she asked me at the end of the story how I was juggling these balls, adding that she thinks that I should take very good care of the the more important balls since she thinks I was and am working too hard.

The story of the balls have different variations but these mostly involve the number of balls involved in the story. In one variant there are five balls - family, friends, health, integrity and work. In another, there are only three balls loved ones, health and work. Family and friends are combined while integrity is not part of the equation (perhaps assumed to be part of all other balls?). In what appears to be the original version, integrity is replaced by spirit (or faith). Among these balls, work is supposed to be made of rubber. If you drop it, it will rebound or bounce back. All the other balls are made of glass. If you drop one, many or all, they may be permanently damaged or, more seriously, be shattered or lost.

I guess it is not important exactly how many balls we are juggling everyday. The message of the story is crystal clear in as far as what we should prioritize in life. We tend to justify working hard in order to earn a living, money that we intend to use to provide for our loved ones including funds to support health care. We tend to forget that in our eagerness to earn more to secure the future, we inadvertently endanger that same future as we relegate the other elements to the proverbial backseat and end up losing these "balls."

Yesterday, I was reminded of these balls when I visited a friend who had a heart attack in the morning and immediately underwent angioplasty to address a blocked artery. I looked at his wife and children and I am reminded that I too have loved ones who are much much more important and who deserves my time and my love more. Indeed life is fragile and we need to understand that this life actually consists of glass and rubber balls. Only, it is probably difficult to recognize which of the glass balls will be damaged or will shatter upon one or more impact. Thus, juggling these balls are quite similar to gambling and I dare say that we do gamble everyday with things we consider important but not necessarily recognize as priorities of others. Perhaps we can only pray and rely on our faith that by God's grace we may be able to go through life without having the glass balls fall and shatter.