The Parallelism Philosophy

by Jane Tawel

They have taken all the see-saws away from the playgrounds. Those big old public see-saws, once found in many of our parks and playgrounds, have been relegated to history’s dust pile, in the cause of safety and fear of liability. Children’s safety is without a doubt, all well and good, but by ridding the world of teeter-totters, the proverbial “They” have robbed us of one of our earliest shared learning lessons in fairness, and absconded with one of the best animated metaphors for living a balanced life. The legendary Theys can continue to strip the playgrounds of actual see-saws, but most human beings will sooner or later be forced to discover what the motion of that out-moded children’s apparatus feels like. Our lives are often much less like that other iconic playground equipment, the spinning merry-go-round, and more like the up and down locomotion of a seesaw. We all eventually ride Life’s seesaw. In finances, fame, health, success, or relationships, or more likely, at one time or another, in all of the above, if we are lucky enough to grow up, our lives will see-saw up and down. It would be good if we could figure out the best ways to totter and teeter and fluctuate and shift and hang on for dear life, to the adult-sized parallel bars of our lives. Perhaps one of the best ways to ride the world’s teeter-totter, is something I call “Parallelism”.