I just came across this passage in a book, Come Away My Beloved by Frances J. Roberts, and thought I would share as it sums up quite nicely the thought that has been going over the back of my mind for the last few years:

…Learning, knowing, working, these all have their place. But these are not the core of life, for living at its center is loving; anything else is not life. Work becomes the fabric from which we weave life only when love holds the threads. Knowledge enriches life to the degree that love controls the thinking. Pleasure becomes the path to the far country if true love has been left behind in pursuit of false values….And move ever, always, determinedly onward as the brook does; and keep the outflow of your life ever in motion.
For in My speaking, you will gain insight. In My stillness, you will gain poise; and joining with Me in the flow, you will experience the progressive life. Yes, only as life is progressive is it life at all. Movement indicates life. Movement safeguards life. Movement promulgates life. Movement gives purpose to life – yes, beauty….It is love being and love doing. Yes, it is love loving. Otherwise love is concept, not reality. It is the believer worshiping – otherwise it is empty religion….It is the flow of divine life. Dam it off by self-centeredness and it becomes a dead sea. Labor, learn, attempt to live apart from its power and impetus, and all is ultimately weariness of body, frustration of soul, disappointment of heart, and failure in purpose.
Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden; enter the stream of My life and you will find rest, you will find power, you will find overflowing joy, you will discover with delight that you have truly become partaker of My life, co-laborer in My Father’s work, and recipient of inestimable rewards.

Without finding a balance in life, and without love being at the centre of it all, is it any real life at all?