Taoist Ideas in Life

I am not considering myself as an expert in "Tao" but I have been reflecting recently on the chapter in Master Sheng Yen's Chan and Enlightenment which has Taoist themes. I have also been thinking of my reading of Capra's Tao of Physics, where he describes Tao as a kind of balance of different energies, some active while others subtle and mysterious. I believe that a lot of the spirit of Tao can be used as a way of looking at life. But again, as anyone steeped in Tao might suggest, how a person uses Tao might depend on what part of the balance they are on.
  I think what attracts me to Tao is that idea of balance, which I am so fond of in my own personal narrative. Much of my blog at some point or another talks about "balance", and I believe this has a lot to do with making sure that one is not going from one extreme or another. To take a simple example: if I am trying too hard to study to "become" something or to achieve a certain goal quickly, I will get very tense and start to distract myself as a result of that tension. It is as though one were compensating for all the tension one creates in concentrating by introducing some pleasurable distraction. This does happen to me a lot when I am forcing myself to solve a problem for which I have no solution at hand: it is as though my mind were "turning on the sprinklers" to stop myself from becoming overheated with thought. On the other hand, one doesn't want to have too much passivity, since this leads to a less engaged way of interacting in the world. How to strike that balance is quite mysterious in itself, but I sometimes feel like the paradigm of having a balance is a good place to start in this regard.
   Knowing that there is a place for tension and conflict in life can also be a helpful way of looking at balance. If things are too smooth, what is not being acknowledged? I begin to feel that whenever my perspectives or ideas are too smooth, chances are that something is missing there.
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