A colleague once shared with me a lesson that was passed on to her, one that she said she didn’t fully understand until several of her crystal balls were broken. My eyes opened wide at that, and I (thought I) was ready to absorb the lesson, whatever it may be.
She told me that in life one juggles several balls. Some of these balls are made of rubber. If a rubber ball is dropped it literally bounces back. But some of the balls are made of crystal. If a crystal ball is dropped it can shatter into a million pieces and can never be fully put back together, can never be made whole again.
I appreciated what I thought was the lesson, but she was only half way done. She continued. She said that the hardest part was that because she can’t always juggle all the balls that are her thrown at her, she had to learn to let some balls drop. It meant admitting that she couldn’t have it all. And she often prioritized the “work” balls, even if they were rubber balls. In fact, she said, almost always, work balls are rubber balls.
Again, I appreciated what I thought was a two-part lesson. In life one juggles balls, fragile crystal ones and bouncy rubber ones. Sometimes there are too many balls, and work balls, even if they are loud and urgent, are most likely to be rubber balls. If you drop one of them, it’s really not the end of the world. Given her high positioned in the organization, I was impressed she would share this lesson.
But it turned out she was only 2/3 of the way done. Learning to drop some balls wasn’t even the hardest lesson she had to learn. It was that sometimes, some crystal balls need to be deliberately dropped. I visibly winced when she said that. Drop a ball that can never be made whole again???
Yes. The hardest part of the lesson for her was to let go of some of the crystal balls. Ones she could never pick up again. Ones she could never repair. One specifically that she cherished for years, bending over backwards and twisting up in knots to maintain. And she let it drop and shatter in a million pieces. And it was the right decision for her.
I could never forget that lesson. I’m still learning how to distinguish amongst all my balls, the rubber ones and the crystal ones, which ones I want to continue to juggle and which ones I am willing to let go of. I’m finding it difficult to let go of the crystal balls, because there’s no going back. And having recently lost one of my crystal balls, this lesson is top of mind again for me.
Do you know which of your balls are your crystal balls? And which of your balls, rubber or crystal, you’re willing to let go of?
More on this, life, and everything in our personal blog, The Endless Weekend, found here.
The Heart of the Matter 
Without using the “ball” metaphor, I’d say we get “functionally fixed” — continuing to do what we’ve done, say what we’ve said, think as we’ve thought, and viewing the world in a manner that diminishes what we can do for the world, for those we love, and for ourselves.
Children don’t seem to suffer from this fixedness because everything is new to them. And perhaps it is no coincidence that many of them experience joy at a level we have left behind in the box we’ve put ourselves into.
Thanks for opening the door to this.
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I like how you phrased it! Indeed, inertia does seem to be a huge force and a huge impact on us. Is it that children aren’t yet as impacted by inertia?
I really like the analogy you brought up to children: there are some things that we are born with, like liking sweet things. Are there other things we’re fixated on at a young age? Or are we more of a tabula rasa?
One of my all time favorite quotes is Shaw’s “we don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.” I hope we can continue to play and experience that joy rather than boxing ourselves out of it.
Thank YOU for opening up this great analogy!
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This is a soul-searching question, if ever there was one! What comes to mind is the weighing of life priorities—what is the most important aspect of my life, dreams, goals, responsibilities, obligations? Family? Money? Service to others? Success? Accomplishment? Soul evolution? Saving the world? Can any of us do, be or have it all? Which is the most important? Which crystal ball is worth saving? What will I have to let go in order to save the others? My soul and I are going to be thinking about this for a good long while. Thanks for asking.
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I love how you said that (and your wonderful compliment as well!), it’s like the words of the ancient sages about how important it is to have an “examined life” (or the way Socrates said it “the unexamined life is not worth living”).
In my personal blog, I pondered on what I believe we both think is the “complement” to this soul-searching question (again, thank you for that compliment, I feel 2 inches taller every time I re-read your comment!), and that’s what is our “larger plan” that our smaller decisions support? Do we have one?
Thank you and your kindred soul for helping me think through this!
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“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Thank you Socrates. “What is our “larger plan” that our smaller decisions support? Do we have one?” Thank you EW. What a wonderful question, and yet again, another juicy tidbit to feed the soul. My sense is that once we can wangle that answer out of ourselves, we’ll be on our way to living our best life. At that point, I bet those balls will juggle themselves!
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It’s the complement, I believe, to the crystal ball question, so I pondered on it out loud with the Panasonic long term plan on my personal blog. I didn’t quite get as far as the self-juggling balls, so clearly I have a wats to go 🙃
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Oh I love this! I never heard about this before, but I appreciate the analogy. What a neat idea about the crystal or rubber balls. We all juggle multiple balls all the time, I just never realized before that they could be made of different material!
Thank you for sharing!!
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Thank you so much, your kind words made me smile irl! I took to that analogy, too, and even though it’s been many years since I first heard it myself, I marvel at it myself as well!
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Thanks for this, EW. I can’t think of anything more important that considering, discerning how we use our time. As you said, having lost one of your precious “crystal balls” recently, the lesson is urgent and putting it ‘top of mind’ makes sense to me. Not everything – or everyone – can be a #1. 💖
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Thank you for your wonderful words, Vicki! Yes, you know more than most that this is a personal topic to me, and I think it’s a terrific way of saying it: not everything or everyone can be #1. To tie it back to a previous discussion: we can only have so many #1 priorities 🙂
Again: thank you (for this and for you) ❤
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Ahh…sending big hugs your way. Much love! ❤️😘❤️
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I love the analogy here. Yes…I think I know which balls to drop and which to juggle…good post
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Thank you so much, just so you’ll know, you made me smile irl as I read your response. So double thanks to you ❤
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💗
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What a fantastic analogy, EW! Personally, health and loved ones are my only crystal balls at this point, and I am willing to go to any length to keep them in the air. I’ve dropped so many balls, both rubber and crystal, and when something “critical” breaks, it’s sometimes just the reminder we need that it wasn’t all the important to begin with.
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First, thank you so very much for your incredibly kind words! And it takes quite a bit of wisdom to determine that those are one’s crystal balls, I like it! And I especially like where you’re taking the analogy: that sometimes it’s only after a ball is dropped, whether it bounces away or breaks, that we find out how important or not important at all it really was. That’s a FANTASTIC observation, thank you for enriching the analogy so much!
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I’ve found that the older I get the more I’ve come to realize which balls to focus on and which ones to let drop. I still juggle them, but don’t care if I drop one and it bounces away from me or shatters at my feet. It’s all about being able to remember that you have balls to juggle to begin with. 😉
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I’m a little awed by that! May I ask, because I want to learn for myself, how you come to realize which balls to focus on and which ones to let drop? I like the use of the word “focus” since it was one of the words I found in your guide-of-the-week post, so it’s coming back into play for me!
And also, please help me understand how it helps to remember that we have balls to juggle?
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No real answer. Just intuition about what’s important and what is not. Trust yourself and all that. As for remembering to juggle balls, you’re retired, things can slide by unnoticed– like which day of the week it is!
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Well I find this post to be brilliant EW! I take a few things from this: the need to be aware of how many balls one individual can juggle. That might be different for everyone but the makeup of those balls is even more important to consider. Where do we put our energy and focus and why when we view the threat that some of our precious crystal balls may be lost. And what plays into our decisions to purposefully drop and smash that perfect piece of glass? What changes within us that allows or even forces that decision?
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Whoa, THANK YOU, Deb, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your words!
I love the way you’ve broken it down to a few digestible points, thank you for helping make it so clear!
And, yes, you’re right, what plays into our (often very difficult) decision to drop and smash a perfect crystal ball? To me, as I continued in my personal blog, it needs to be part of a “larger plan”, ideally a long term plan, and when I say long, I mean LONG 🙂
And I think it’s simply a SPECTACULAR observation, on what changes within us as these decisions (or sometimes happenstances?) to drop the balls happen? I need to think about this quite a bit more: thank you for raising such a fantastic question!
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Wow, what a great analogy, EW! And one that’s so relatable. Like Julia, I’ll be thinking on this for good while. Much to ponder here. Thank you for this!
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Thank you so much for the wonderful compliment! It’s a topic that I’ve been thinking about for a while, and as I continued in my should-have-been-published-together-but-one-hiccup-later-was-only-published-today personal blog, there’s a question of how do we make those decisions, and, as Wynne pointed out, how do we “clean up” the broken shards?
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Whoa – letting go of a crystal ball. I’m sitting here with the cursor flashing thinking about my crystal balls – especially the ones that I’ve let go. Some on purpose and many because of things outside my control. It seems like we need to afford ourselves time to adjust to the rhythm of a different number of balls – and also need a ritual for how to clean up the shards.
What a great post – incredibly told as you walked us through ALL the lessons in your colleague’s analogy. Hmm, a deep teaching that has me looking at the world just a little bit differently. And I’m so thankful, EW!
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“Whoa” is such a great compliment, Wynne, thank you so much! I know that I, like my colleague, have bent over backwards to keep up a ball we should have let go of already … If only we always had the strength and wisdom to let them go?
I love where you’ve taken it with a ritual for cleaning up the shards: I missed out on that entirely, and I think it’s a critical component! I’m going to have to noodle on that some more. I love your knack for expanding my thinking: thank you for that, I’m truly grateful for that!
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Love this post EW. Love the lessons. I especially love that you’ve put words to some thing that I’ve thought about in the past, but took it many steps forward. I’ve always viewed work and life as a balancing act and that sometimes things are going to fall, but I really do love the last part, that sometimes there are going to be important things that we have to let go. It’s not easy, it’s not fun, but it’s important to our mental states. I can think of a few things that I’ve had let drop. It was hard, but I was so much better for it. Great post. Thanks for sharing.
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You honor me, Brian, thank you so much! In my personal blog, the complementary post is about the how of making these terribly difficult decisions. Yes, it’s important for our mental state, I wholly agree with that. But it’s so difficult that sometimes we pay with our mental state to keep that extra ball up in the air longer than we should? How do we get past that? I’m searching for wisdom…
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I hear you … I don’t like to admit that I can’t keep all the balls up in the air! Don’t like admitting that something has to give.
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Acknowledging you have crystal balls is hard enough. Discerning which is which sounds like it could be heart-rending, especially if you’re looking to identify them with the knowledge you will need to drop some. Life is hard at times.
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Those are two excellent points, they are two different types of challenges! And, yes, discerning which is which, especially for the crystal balls, where there’s no “turning back” can be particularly heart-rendering! Well said! I didn’t share in the original post, but an example my colleague shared was about a toxic relationship my colleague had to let go of. It WAS heart-rendering. You’re extremely perceptive!
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I’m in agreement with everyone else, what a great analogy. Its difficult to keep everything going without dropping something and sitting reflecting on your post, I can see where I’ve dropped some crystal balls. I’m glad to say I’ve learned from those experiences, and as was said by someone above, too, I think we get better at deciding what to drop/what to keep in the air but that probably comes from the experience of stepping on the broken shards of crystal on the floor.
Thank you for putting this idea across so effectively
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Thank you so much for the 2 compliments, I really appreciate both. Very much. I think it’s the highest achievement to know that you’ve learned from mistakes made, so we don’t make them again!
In my personal blog (which due to a hiccup only got published today, they were supposed to be complementary 🙂 ) I was pondering about the second excellent point you made: how do we get better at deciding what do drop/keep in the air. I’m still working at it…
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One of the most freeing lessons in life is that we can’t do it all. And that’s ok. And it’s ok to let things go even it means we’ll never get it back the way it once was.
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What a wonderful take on it: imagine if we accomplished all we ever could accomplish, what would be the purpose of waking up in the morning? Well said!
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That was such a good analogy for extremely important life lessons. The first two lessons: some balls are rubber, some are crystal and we must learn to juggle them, and be able to identify which are dropable rubber balls, are both important. But, that third part is crucial. Spending the time and energy juggling a crystal ball that no longer serves us is a waste of both… and they are commodities we all don’t have enough of to waste. Great post!
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Very thought provoking and beautiful. It reminds me of the spinning plates idiom and how anyone with a lot going on is going to break one from time to time, but this goes further. In response to your prompt, I think some of my crystal balls are relationships (sadly) that are precious but exhausting.
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Thank you for your generous compliments and insightful observations:
Yes! The spinning plate idiom is spot on! They never mentioned if some of the plates were made of delicate porcelain and some of bouncy plastic? 🙂
And, yes, I agree. Some of all of our crystal balls are relationships, some precious, some exhausting, some more of one than the other, and that makes the decisions around them so immensely difficult?
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