When Brian G. Dyson, the CEO of Coca Cola was retiring in 1994, the final speech that he gave in his farewell party was small but very effective. He said,

‘Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them Work, Family, Health, Friends and Spirit, and you are keeping all of these in the air.

You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls; family, health, friends and spirit are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, damaged or even shattered’.

 Those who are working know very well how much true these words are. With the exception of a small number of people, every one of us has experienced setbacks and difficulties in our career or work.  A business may fail, we may be fired from a job or we may switch to another job in pursuit of better opportunities but it is for sure that, most of the time, we have recovered the loss in business or got even better job but this is not the case with the other four balls because once they are dropped, the damages may be irreparable or irreplaceable.

But we see that some people think the welfare of family absolutely depends on the work they do and thus it should be given preference to all other things of life. They place the work on the first place, which is followed by social networks related with your business or work and then comes the turn of family, friends, health and other things.

The spirit of good and efficient work is a gifted quality which excels a person in his career and make him distinct among a number of other people working in a robotic manner in the field but it has been found that a person who works more than the others usually does so when he fails to manage his works in an organized and efficient manner. When a work will be carried out in a better manner, it would definitely result in efficient results but if not, we will have to devote more of our time to this and in this way, we will be eating away the time that must be devoted for more important factors in our life like family, health, friends, recreation or merely lifting up our spirit by doing a work that pleases us.

A person has developed a strange idea about his work. He says that he will never leave the work of today for tomorrow and will stay in office, however late it gets. For this purpose, he is found to be arriving home very late in almost all the days of the week when children sleep after waiting for their father and wife’s dream of having a family dinner remains a dream. This idea is of the successful people but I have witnessed that the work which he tries hard to complete the same day can be done the next day as well because whatever is our field, it is always not the case that if a work is left for the next day, it would harm our work. It is an exception that sometimes an important work must be finished the same day but it happens once in a blue moon.

Some other people were sitting somewhere, having tea and chatting with each other. The work in office had finished and it was getting dark. One of the men received a phone call from house and he said, ‘No, no, you should not wait for me for dinner. I will come late. Children should not wait for me, I will see them in morning. Ok, I will talk to them and buy them whatever they need but it would get late today, so we will talk in morning, Ok, bye then’.

He folded his phone and kept it in his pocket and gave a strange smile and said, ‘A few days before my son said something in a strange manner. He said that he could not see me more these days because I arrive home after he sleeps and I wake up after he leaves to school in morning.’ There was a strange silence in the room for a while.

Many people are there who worked so hard that they forgot about their health and when they had acquired all the success in career and accumulated good money, they had lost their health. There is a famous saying that, ‘We spend our health to acquire money and when we acquire money, we spend it to resume our health’, because all these years, we worked hard and ignored our health and in the end, discovered that it had all come at cost of our health and now, we should start working on our health and loss of health turns out to be more dangerous than the loss of work and money because the other two things may be acquired but it is always a hard task to regain your health and the sufferings without work or money may not be felt too much but a life with poor health is indeed painstaking in which every moment passes in pain and despair.

Then comes the turn of one’s own time in which he likes to do something that pleases his spirit. Same joy may be driven from the work or by living with family but in most of the cases; you feel that you need to do something different to relieve you of the tiresome load of work and incessant competition. This may be anything that pleases your heart and lightens your spirit. When you ask the children what they like most to do in their spare time, you would get an immediate answer. Similarly, all of us like some activities that may not be for making money or improving our work but for the sheer joy of your heart. It may be hiking, gardening, playing any outdoor game, chess, reading a book, listening to a soft music and many more and these are the things that keep your spirit up. After having some time with your favorite activity, you feel really relieved of all the tensions of work and responsibilities of family and it acts as an elixir for your exhausted mind and body.

 Importance of friends cannot be ignored when we talk of the other factors mentioned by Brian G. Dyson. Friends are not those who come to you for their work or you visit them when you have any kind of work with them. True friends are those who stand with you at all the good and bad days and for whom you have a special place in your heart. Friendship is also like an engine; if you keep with them in touch and visit them, the intensity and bond of friendship is strengthened otherwise, ignorance of friendship weakens it and thus you completely lose your friend one day. Same formula applies for making and developing new friendships.

While juggling with these five balls of life, we should try to keep balance in them and treat them according to their value and importance.