By Mike Bossy

While having lunch with a banker, Rob Musselman of TD Canada Trust, we had a discussion around the shortage of human capital in our respective industries. The conversation then turned to “Work-life balance.” Rob made the following statement:

“There is no such thing as work-life balance, there is just life.”

Now he had me thinking. I don’t know if there is “just life," but what I do know is life is a series of decisions and, if you are fortunate, the decisions are yours. There are crossways and points of inflection. Points in time where you define your future and develop your definition of balance, not someone else’s. This definition of balance is not a society-imposed definition.

Coincidentally, after this conversation, I was watching an episode of Star Trek Discovery. In that episode the following statement was made by Mr. Spock to Commander Michael Burnham:

“Now does matter. What happened before no longer exists. What will happen next has not yet been written. We have only now, that is our greatest advantage. What we do now, here in the moment, has the power to determine the future” (Star Trek Discovery - S3, Ep11).”

As per Jordan Peterson in his book Beyond Order, “the ultimate question of man is not who we are, but who we could be.”

It’s difficult to have balance, no matter what your definition, when you are striving to be all you can be.