While on a larger scale, it may be evaluating the demands of industry against the preservation of nature, or increasing debt on the promise of growth, or trying to define whether some new tool or methodology has an overall positive or negative contributing effect.
Really, balance is another word for sustainability - although in a broader more holistic sense than is commonly inferred.
Now, I know the two are not a perfect fit, but would suggest that to a large extent if what we do and how we do it is genuinely in balance, then that usually implies it is sustainable.
And it strikes me that balance is a more user-friendly term, easier for Joe Public to understand and appreciate.
So perhaps, given "sustainability" has become somewhat tarnished in the lexicon of environmentalism, we should adopt "balance" instead.
See, once you start thinking about things in terms of balance, factors somehow become easier to weigh and assess against each other - and you start coming up with answers.
Whereas when you consider them in terms of sustainability, inevitably you wind up with more questions.
Oh, I realise this is simplistic - but isn't it something simple we want, in order to adequately measure and then tailor our world?
And if something as simple as a change in terminology provides a key that lets us open up to the obvious, then let's use it.
In short, take a common-sense approach.
Common sense may be in far too short supply these days - yet, when you think to apply it, it's the simplest way to assess the worth of anything.
Mind you, there's a fine line between ignorant bigotry and common sense, and many of those espousing the latter are really practising the former, and in need of some special rebalancing of their own.
But then, so are we all.
One interesting rebalancing act I've had cause to ponder this week is how to redress the downside of technology - the digitised eyes and numbed brain you get from staring too much at computer screens.
Taikura Rudolf Steiner School in Hastings played host to the young men and women of the San Francisco Waldorf High School eurythmy ensemble. Eurythmy is a movement art that uses gesture and rhythmic forms to present a visual interpretation of music and the spoken word.
Done well, eurythmy evokes and resonates with the etheric forces around us - the nebulous "extrasensory" realm of the soul or spirit - and thus can be a powerful and moving experience for performer and audience alike.
During the performances, the ensemble's director made a point of comparing the mechanical ether of technology with the human etheric, and suggested the one could be used to counterbalance the other.
While this may seem rather esoteric, given eurythmy is already successfully used therapeutically to address conditions such as ADHD, it's a promising idea.
Certainly as we develop more intense interactive technology we need to discover ways to keep ourselves healthy while using it. With the advent of gesture-recognition software, it may be that a marriage of eurythmy and such recognition systems could provide the healthy balance technophiles need.
It is only by being open to these sorts of tangential ideas that we can find and develop the right tools - and perspective - to re-balance both ourselves and the planet.
That's the right of it.
Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.
