Action & Contemplation

As a kid, my neighbors had in their house a perpetual motion toy that I was always fascinated with (like the one pictured above). Every time we would visit them I would go find this little desktop toy and experiment with it. When you pulled a ball off to the side and released it, the ball would drop down and strike the other balls sending only the ball on the opposite side into motion. This phenomenon took place in varying proportions depending on the number of balls that were “active.” It was no fun to activate all of the balls at once. They would simply swing back and forth together and, for some reason, that seemed completely uninteresting to me. However, to watch a ball immediately switch from the “active” position to the still position was mesmerizing. I could literally play with that toy for hours.

In The Active Life, Parker Palmer views action and contemplation as weights on opposite ends of the same string. They are each propelled into motion by the motion of the other. It reminds me of the perpetual motion toy. The “active” parts must come to rest, and in doing so the resting (or “contemplative”) parts are flung into motion. Palmer wants to balance the scales and give equal weight to both contemplation and action. However, in my experimentation with the toy, I found that there was never true balance. If you activate two parts then three remain at rest, if you activate three parts then only two remain at rest. It seems there is no even or fair way to treat both parts equally. Action and Contemplation are compatible in the sense that they are both attached to the same structure that we call life. They are incompatible in the sense that they cannot be activated simultaneously and still operate correctly.