I was at an event a few weeks ago where a female entrepreneur admitted that there was absolutely no such thing as work-life balance. The group of women standing around raised their glasses to that and laughed, knowingly. “Yeah,” she said, “I’m going for work-life “harmony” instead.  Smiles, nods and murmurs of understanding all around.

The strange noise the ladies couldn’t place was likely the heavy clunk of my eyes rolling over. I’m also pretty sure my face was all:

I’m sorry: WHAT?

If we can all accept that work-life balance doesn’t exist – for anyone, least of all a female entrepreneur with a spouse and children and a modicum of personal life beyond that – why bother with semantics to repackage this oppressive idea? Potato/Patato, I say.

If we’re talking “harmony,” my experience is that life is less Indigo Girls and more Free Form Jazz, with various parts randomly yelling more and louder for their due.  Not that I wouldn’t like more Indigo Girls; it’s just that the various demands of work, family and personal life rarely “la-la-la” like I think they should. Divas all, each part wants all the attention, all of the time.

How is it that in 2016 the tyrannical idea still persists that such a thing as work-life balance (harmony, whatever) is even possible, anyway?  Anyone who’s been alive for more than a few years knows it’s a receding horizon. The goalposts move as you do. “Balance” is the idea we pursue that just there is an oasis of satisfaction, peace and happiness. It’s a hologram! A mirage!

It isn’t a real place.

We march through the shimmer towards this imaginary place nonetheless.  

Work-life balance as a concept mainly serves as a means to beat ourselves up for not doing life somehow “better.”  For every 14-hour day we worked and didn’t see our family; for every kid issue that took priority and we got behind at work; for weeks – like the one I just took – where we tend to our private selves and selfishly escape both to hike the magical, pink hills of Utah. No balance, scales entirely tipped towards self-care at the seeming expense of both family and work.

I’m OK with it. Even from 2000 miles away I could still hear the other parts of my life barking their Jazzy needs at me. Upon my return it’s all work and kids, all the time. At the seeming expense of myself.

That’s about as balanced as it gets, right there: all one thing then all the other at the apparent expense of what’s left out.

I know there are those who argue that even though it cannot be attained, that work-life balance/harmony is still a noble and desirable cause worth striving for.

It is not.

The concept itself is total shit and the sooner we can ditch it and embrace the truth that life is and always will be dynamic and mobile and unsettled, the happier we will all be generally.

I say this because, inherent in the notion of “balance,” is stasis. Nothing moves, everything is perfectly, evenly just so. It’s a pause button.

Except life, like the universe itself, only has two modes: growth or decay. These are the only options. If you are not pursuing one, by elimination, you are pursuing the other. Stasis – or “balance” – is actually impossible.

The poet David Whyte says that balance is “deadly boring” and I’m inclined to agree. He also says there is a sense that “unbalancing …must take place in order to push a person into a new and larger set of circumstances.”

“New and larger set of circumstances”- also known as “growth.” Personal evolution has never come from all-things-being-equal. To the contrary, it comes almost universally from a level of discomfort at either end of the scale: delirious new heights or bleak, damp depths. When we feel ourselves tipping over, we grow the capacity to right ourselves again. Bigger. Smarter. Stronger. Is falling over and staying there even an option?

To be unbalanced in the David Whyte way is to hit “GO” on life. Growth or decay. Pause or Play.

For me, the closest I come to work-life balance is playing life less like a see-saw and more like a giant game of Whack-A-Mole: KIDS! Gotcha. WORK! Gotcha. WORK! Gotcha again. HOUSE! Yep. SELF! Yes. RELATIONSHIP! Gotcha. KIDS! Yeah. WORK! Yeah.

And so forth. Exhaustingly – and joyfully - so.

The balance in this model is within you. Yes, the external stuff is all over the place. It can’t be any other way. But to play effectively, you must be balanced yourself, as an individual. What does that mean? For starters, it means applying adequate attention where attention is needed and being OK with what's left out of that equation. It's being sufficiently committed to all the parts of your life to know that each piece will get its due. Or, put another way, that all incessant moles will eventually get a whack.

The nature of our lives is that each area demands more or less of us at different times. Life is inherently, fundamentally, irrevocably and forever out of balance. All attempts at trying to right the scales or make the bass line sync with the chorus will only leave you feeling like a failure; like the proverbial “not enough.” All because you’re not winning at defying the very character and quality of life itself.

Embrace the unbalanced life and do the best you can, just like always.

To paraphrase DEVO, Whack it. Whack it good.

People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them. – Ralph Waldo Emerson