One Word, Two Ways: Balance

I recently started reading “The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World.”  The first part of the book focuses on the theory of gifts and goes into a lot of gift giving practices of various ancient tribal cultures.  I’m only just starting to wrap my head around some of the ideas being presented and thought this concept (and implicit nod to imbalance) was pretty interesting: “Partners in barter talk and talk until they strike a balance, but the gift is given in silence.”

Duality

There can be no good without evil,
So that, we say, is that.
Does it follow that there
Can be no evil without
Good?
No sadness without happiness;
No hate without love;
No dark without light;
No despair without hope;
No wrong without right;
No yin without yang?
Must we forgo positives
To extinguish all negatives?
To do without effort;
To want without attachment.
To live without dying?

-Taoist Poem