Ever since I was a kid I have pertained to the theory that everything in a persons life reaches a balance as long as that person has a clear and rational perspective on life. If you have one bad thing on a scale of 1 to 10, then you will have an equally positive thing to balance the scale out. The trick is seeing the positives and negatives.

I would argue that there are as many good things in a persons life as there are bad things. I have worked extensively with people suffering disabilities and can often see the positives in their life - the only error here is that it is ME seeing their positives and not THEM. It is crucial and imperative that each person perceive their own positives and negatives, because at the end of the day another person can only ad their opinion, it is YOU, the subject, who feels joy of the positives and the depression and grunt of the negatives. Who can say other wise?

When you look back on your life and think hard enough you may be able to notice opportunities you missed, and those that presented themselves that were perhaps unexpected, yet none the less you took them up, only to find they were the exact thing that lead you to a positive. You may remember painful memories but also joyful ones. If you take an objective, (well as objective as humanly possible), look at your life right now, you may be surprised to realise just how lucky you have it… Then again if you are the type of person who is thankful for all they have, your positives most likely will not come as a surprise to you.

The potential for positives and negatives must also be weighed in here as they too have power over your life and at the end of the day the point of the balance theory is as a tool for a person to percieve thier life at any given point in time. Sure a person can take a potential positive and ruin it and then go on to ruin their lives, but they began at a different point to where they ended.

The theory comes to a standstill at comparison. As soon as a person begins using other peoples lives as basis for reasoning/judgment or benchmark to their own life, they are entering a dangerous and almost senseless path. Reason being that most people have very different situations and there are probably very few people who can be accurately compared holistically.

The balance theory attempts to elucidate depression in hope that people will learn to deal with down times in a different way. If everything in your life is ’set’ to balance out then really stressing about things is futile - realisation of this would be perfect. Then again it is the imperfections that make us human…