The Balanced Life
This at least seems to me the main problem for philosophers....How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?  How can this world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour of being our own town?....We need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure.  We need to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome.  We need to be happy in this wonderland without being once merely comfortable. 
--G. K. Chesterton 

Healthy personality involves a balance between receptivity and manipulation, between wonder and action....The unity of the authentic life is plural; its wisdom lies in understanding the necesssity for the changing moments and seasons of life....Wisdom comes, usually with age, when a man can look back over his years and realize that there is an economy to the seasons of life.  He see that the times of strife, suffering, and waiting which seemed so difficult to endure were as necessary to the formation of personality as the times of love, joy, and ecstasy.  To love and accept the self as it is, is to accept all the moments that formed it. 
--Sam Keen, Apology for Wonder (1969) 

                                      Ecclesiates: Chapter 3 (Verses 1 through 13)

For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: 
A time to be born, And a time to die; 
A time to plant, And a time to pluck up that which is planted; 
A time to kill, And a time to heal; 
A time to break down, And a time to build up; 
A time to weep, And a time to laugh; 
A time to mourn, And a time to dance; 
A time to cast away stones, And a time to gather stones together; 
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing; 
A time to seek, And a time to lose; 
A time to keep, And a time to cast away; 
A time to tear, And a time to sew; 
A time to keep silence, And a time to speak; 
A time to love, And a time to hate; 
A time for war, And a time for peace. 

What gain has the worker from his toil?  I have seen the business God has given to the sons of men to be busy with.  He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity into man's mind, yet so that man can't find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live. Also it is God's gift to man that every one should eat and drink, and take pleasure in all his toil.