At the beginning of time, an infinitely dense and hot point exploded and became the universe.
Or, God said, “Let there be Light.”
In that most ancient primordial heat, the first alchemy in history took place. The transmutation of infinite potential into finite actuality.
And in that original crucible, there should have been equal portions of all the ingredients of reality. But there weren’t. We know this because, if there were, matter and antimatter would have annihilated each other, down to the last particle. Nothing would be left. No stars, galaxies, nebulae, or planets. No existence at all.
Somewhere in the transition between the singularity and the universe, though, the ingredients shifted, all on their own. Matter just barely outnumbered antimatter, quarks just barely out-quarked antiquarks, and that, as they say, is history. All of it. Literally. At the most incomprehensibly vast scales, and the most infinitesimal ones.
A spontaneous disparity in the inchoate substance before particles formed. Or, the spark of creation by the twinkling eye of the Creator. Or, even, the cosmic representation of Original Sin itself.
No matter the interpretation, this asymmetry, this disparity, this fall from the grace of God’s perfect garden, is the beginning of material existence in the Universe. It is the very foundation onto which reality cohered. This is an imbalance at the core of everything it means to be.
Imbalance built upon itself from that point on.
Tiny differences in the initial diaspora of matter allowed gravity to pull it together into clumpier regions than others, forming stars and planets. The dazzling power of the image of the Cosmic Microwave Background is that it carries this truth forward from the most distant past. Where we expected to see a smooth uniform picture, instead we saw this strange chaotic web of energy.
We also discovered that the universe is expanding, not in the way that explosions expand and then settle—no, our expansion is accelerating because of another imbalance, this one in what we call dark energy.
When a new star is born, planets are formed from the detritus leftover from its birth.
Lower than that, the vast shifting scales of our planet’s skin, the tectonic plates, are responsible for pushing up the materials and nutrients for life to sustain itself continually.
We living creatures burst into life, perfectly incongruous and beautifully asymmetrical as we are, and then fade from it, our bodies aging, our telomeres shortening, our temporary wisp of consciousness and independence fading to black, a swift whisper in the corner of a vast dark hall. True balance in life would grant us equilibrium in our bodies and immortality, a utopia true in its perfection and true in its sterility.
As we walk, as we run, we are constantly falling and catching ourselves, falling and catching, over and over—the imbalance that engenders all motion.
At the tiniest levels, entropic decay shows us that matter grows old too, along with all of us.
All the delicately suspended clockwork of the universe that arose, the super clusters, the galaxies, the black holes, and the supernovae that forge all the complex atoms that make life, intelligence, and technology possible—all of that striving towards balance is still built on that tiny wobble at the start.
This universe is asymmetrical. And the thing that is both miracle and base truth is that it must be this way for everything to exist as it is. If anything could be said to be a single unifying trait of all existence, a face of God, a profound cosmic message of what is True, writ large, about the nature of this universe, it is the banner stretched across the void, reading: Balance does not exist.
Balance is antithetical to existence.
The slow descent of the universe from order to chaos is known as entropy. But why does it all seem so organized, spinning like gears and cogs?
There’s a theory about the apparent order of our slice of the cosmos. It reveals that in the decay from order to chaos, the spontaneous appearance of organized complexity follows naturally, like steps on the stairway down to oblivion. Of course, clocks too wind themselves down in the fullness of time, but for a brief stretch they run apace with it, like dolphins leaping and playing at the bow of a ship. That is to say, balance is achievable in this world. It may be temporary, but it isn’t a pipe dream.
Physicists who oppose this idea of the entropic decay, or heat death, of the universe, point out that we only understand entropy in closed thermodynamic systems, that “a universe and its major constituents that have never been in equilibrium in their entire existence” (Walter Grandy, 2008) have no coherent definition of entropy. Instead, there is a suggestion that a fragmented universe of many non-equilibrium states can achieve stability in its imbalance.
Whichever version turns out to be true, recognizing that imbalance is at the core of what it is to exist does not mean rejecting stability, peace, or equanimity. It means accepting that those things are impermanent and precious, valuable in their ephemerality rather than disposable. It means that our constant striving for some sort of balance, stability, a refuge from the chaos, is an aspiration, not a destination. Striving in aspiration toward an infinitely retreating ideal is not, and never has been pointless, though cynicism and nihilism tell us it is. How many more thousands of years of compounded messages from art, literature, and philosophy do we need for this to be known deeply by all? How many more idioms like “the ends do not justify the means,” and “life is a journey, not a destination” do we need? The point is the striving. It is the only way to ever grow as a person.
As a child, I was obsessed with the Star Wars movies. The idea of the Force, or the Taoist Way, is one that still resonates with me, one that I still believe to be real in some symbolic, metaphysical way. The core of the movies, all nine of them now, is that “balance” will be brought to the Force through some prophesied figure. But repeatedly, we see how that is not ever achieved. Not in some grander sense of cosmic alignment. The fact that stories require conflict to continue on is a feature, not a bug, of our universe. It is, in Star Wars, the very belief in balancing the Force that actually leads to much of the conflict.
Likewise, the belief within each of us that there is some kind of achievable balance in our lives—that there is a norm, a standard, a correct way of being around which there is no friction, a personal utopia—is in fact the very cause of much of our suffering, our internal imbalance tilted far in the wrong direction.
Merely accepting imbalance can’t resolve this, though. Our minds can’t just edit out the influence of years or decades of misunderstanding and strife with the click of a button. These things must be disentangled, requiring care and work and self-compassion. It means understanding the various imbalances within ourselves, accepting them, and making peace with them. It means doing the same with the external imbalances. It means understanding our own wiring, our own thoughts.
Metacognition and the process of facing ourselves can be painful, difficult, and harrowing. But it is also our surest path towards self-actualization—that is, reducing our imbalance back to something as close to that original wobble at the start of all things as possible. Never true balance, no, but why would we ever want such a thing? Why would we ever want to stop feeling, experiencing, touching this existence in all its glorious light and mysterious darkness? Beauty, love, joy, and peace can only be meaningful if ugliness, hate, pain, and strife also exist.
Knowing from the outset that imbalance is the norm, that people need to learn how to understand themselves, and how to move meaningfully toward balance, changes everything. All of this knowledge hinges not just on education, but on community, on the power of relying on those around us whom we can trust. The nihilistic individualism that arises from materialism claims that it can provide the meaning and self-sufficiency we all need to thrive. Is it not obvious that this has been a disastrous lie? Reliance upon others is not just the natural way of our world, it is baked into our DNA. It is the evolutionary process of resolving imbalance. Humans only evolved to become a dominant species through cooperation, and, yes, through diversity. We only developed fundamental skills and knowledge by learning from each other, relying on expertise and the generational knowledge of our ancestors. Our ability to do that is not magic, it’s biological, neurological, physical, existential.
Ironically, it is leaning into this reliance upon others that gives us the most freedom, meaning, and self-sufficiency. The most balance. If the tools to examine our minds are passed down in the way cooking, hunting, building, and culture have all been passed down, we give our descendants a more expansive world to grow into, one less hampered by psychological baggage and bad decisions. Not a world of balance, but one that strides further toward it than ours has. That is a world I would like to see.
This was so good.