Too much of one thing

You might be familiar with the country western song "Too Much Fun." The singer asks: "What's that mean? It's like too much money; there's no such thing." These lines are certainly misleading.

Can a person have too much fun, or too much money, or too many friends, or too much bad luck, or too much of ... You can fill in the blank with anything that comes to mind and then ask if it's a problem. I suspect that most people would answer that there's no problem with too much...if it's considered good, "There's no such thing."

Let me choose some specific examples and ask if there is a problem. Is too much good food a problem? Well, of course it is. If you eat too much good or bad food, you will likely get sick.

Is too much money a problem? Of course it is. With too much money a person loses their focus on reality and begins to seek power or control.

Is too much casual living a problem? Well, once again, it is. Too much casual living results in a lack of responsibility or, again, a loss of reality. The point is that too much of anything is a problem.

If there is too much of one thing, then the opposite is never experienced. This produces a one-sided existence. Among many different effects, this alters a person's perspective of reality. If a person never struggles with too little money, then empathy for other people living with too little money will be absent. The fullest experience of life requires that we live both sides but not in extremes. This is similar to describing both sides of a coin. When living with the whole coin, we experience the balance of both sides not just one side or the other.

This becomes most important when discussing psychology. Living with one psychological side, say a particular belief, often prevents the possibility of experiencing the opposite side of the belief. As a result, a person's psychological development is in jeopardy. When we live with the two sides, or opposites, we not only enhance our development but we experience more empathy and feeling toward other people and situations in the world. This simply means that an internal psychological balance provides us with an understanding, or greater empathy, of both sides of an external experience in the world. Isn't that interesting?

Every day, we observe people, including ourselves, living unbalanced lives. Unfortunately, this imbalance produces problems and difficulties for us and others.