You’ve heard enough times that you should be “balanced”. It turned out there are many cases where the extreme ends (one or both) are the best place to be.
The notion of balance in our society is so prevalent that most people can’t even think about balance being a bad thing. But there is nothing in the universe, be it in physics, math, or logic that tells us balance is sacred. It would go against the complexity of life and society. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it doesn’t really matter.
The Game of Life takes place in space, the universe. Most of it takes place on Earth, a smaller, finite space. Our brain, where The Game of Self plays, is also a space. Understanding spaces is important, just as much as understanding time:
- A space has size.
- Any space has a reaction when overcrowded. It can eject best/worst/old/new/small/big pieces of its current content. It can block or even self-destruct.
- Spaces have dimensions. Every dimension can have a direction.
It’s very important to understand spaces because your head is also a space of the type that ejects old content from its conscious department when new different content enters it. Your thoughts and emotions fight for influence at any given point in time. Building an intuition about how this whirlwind occurs is impossible without the all-important principle:
If you don’t want to think about something, think about something else.
We call the dimensions “spectrums”. Let’s look at a typical spectrum:
You eat half of a huge pizza and you’re full. You have 2 options: Throw the other half away or go out to leave it for a homeless person. You decide to throw it away.
How much should you care about what you just did?
Too little and you let it go. No one can tell if possibly cheering a homeless person with a semi-fresh, not-so-healthy pizza is better or worse than investing this time in another way.
Too much and you decide you’ll order 3 more oversized pizzas and then spend half an hour to bring them personally to a local homeless shelter.
The Game of Life result depends on a simple question: was your time and money well spent, compared to the result this yielded? If you’re making $1000 an hour, it can be argued that working half an hour, making $500, and donating them for supplying food to African kids dying from hunger is even better than what you did. But for most people, it will be a near-best use of their time and money to do something so good for others and society.
Even better, The Game of Self result is spectacular. You feel great and you made a hunter move, that may well lead to other beautiful acts in the future.
So we can access the ends of the spectrum now:
You care too little – you’re good. You care too much – you’re the best! For the medium amount of care given – you spend a slightly guilty evening at home and no homeless person gets to eat any pizza. Also, you made a Sheep decision which may lead to other such decisions in the future. Most spectrums in life about how much you care look exactly like this one.
Some stuff you cannot change and you shouldn’t (for a good Game of Self) care (golden rule!).
Some you can and if it’s worth it, you should care for the change to happen. Though you can also don’t care and focus your energy elsewhere, this is better than the balance. It’s sometimes a hunter’s move to not care if the issue isn’t critical. But to care and not do anything is the classic sheep move, the worst of the worst for the present and future. And this hell comes with balance, a trap that may require you to get mad to get out of.
We have countless spectrums where clearly all the joy is at one end. How much empathy should we have? As much as possible. How many bioweapons should we have? Exactly zero. I can overload you with countless spectrums that destroy the concept of balance completely.
Self-help advice focuses on The Game of Self and in The Game of Self, the main quantifiable thing is how much you care.
By implying that somehow the best amount of everything is always in the middle when all evidence says it’s usually not, is not just irresponsible, it’s harmful to individuals and society. If you know someone who misunderstands life balance, you can share this with them. It’s a hunter move 🙂
