The Book of Balance Begins
Part 1 of the Book of Balance series
The time has come!
I recently changed the name of my Substack from The Bear Cave to Bear’s Book of Balance.
Why?
Mainly because The Bear Cave doesn’t actually tell you anything about what I write.
I have spent 16 years by now abroad, experiencing as much as I possibly can, because that’s what I believe life is about. It’s about living and experiencing and learning and resting and repeating. Whatever I can’t experience myself, I hope my friends will vicariously tell me through their life stories.
So what’s the number 1 lesson I’ve learned in my life that I want to share with my writing, more than anything else?
Balance!
What is balance, really?
Googling the definition, you’ll find the following:
Definition: balance (/ˈbaləns/, noun)
An even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady.
"she lost her balance and fell"
Similar: stability, equilibrium, steadiness, footing,
A situation in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.
"the obligations of political balance in broadcasting"
Similar: fairness, justice, impartiality, egalitarianism, equal opportunity
Upon that foundation, let’s talk about this practically, because I am, funnily enough, a Libra…
To me, balance is the ability to hold two truths at the same time and understand and respect both sides for their differences, ultimately with the goal of living together in peace and unity, regardless of who we are as individuals.
Humans can never pull in one direction forever…
If you look at the world today, one of the major things that’s destroying us, it’s division. The polarization of opinions is literally killing us all.
How many polarized pairings can you think of? Lovers and haters, liberals and conservatives, traditionalists and progressives, religious folks and atheists… the list is endless.
The thing about this is that you can never convince 100% of people to do one thing in a group as big as the world. If nothing else, at least one person will always resist just to amuse themselves. 100% of people are not logical or reasonable or willing to hear another perspective, so assuming you can logic or reason everyone onto your team is inherently foolish and unrealistic.
Yet this seems to be a strong driving force in how this world works. We want everything to be simple, easy, and convenient. We don’t see the benefit of work, passion, and production. And guess what? I’m gonna get annoying about this, but you know where we all thrive most? When we put these things in balance, my friends!
This is why The Book of Balance exists. I believe that the answer to polarization is inherently found in compromise, understanding, communication… and finding balance.
Quick Question: Why Is Peace Off the Table?
One of my friends brought this up when we were hanging out recently. Russian vs Ukraine, Israel vs Palestine… when we talk about it, it’s always about who’s winning and who’s losing, while it’s rarely about efforts to make peace.
Now, the immediate answer to why we’re not making peace is that the world is allowing it, fucked up as that may be. In the years leading up to 2025, our leaders have become more alarming in the way they behave. For example, the Perus Suomalaiset in Finland (tl;dr: the racist hate party) think it’s cool to advertise their Christmas parties’ activity of shooting arrows into targets with the faces of their political rivals. No jokes. Somehow, all of the asshole behaviors that we’ve been trying to beat out of society over the past decade have come roaring back with a vengeance. No one wants to make peace, they want to WIN, DOMINATE, RULE!
We might as well go back to fighting with sticks and clubs at this point. I hope Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg do actually get in the ring and just finally get their steroid-given testosterone out of their systems. My money’s on Zuck, but maybe I just wanna see Elon get dropped by a dipshit who wants to turn the world into Ready Player One.
Catch that? That’s my petty saltiness toward the world. I’ll never pretend to be above it. I’m a dank, sarcastic, mean fucker in my head, but I mostly keep those thoughts there where they don’t hurt anyone, because I am also aware that they’re not productive. Feelings are real, but that doesn’t mean they need to be expressed.
Do I condone snark generally? Not against other people… I believe in niceness. But in text, people find passionate rants resonating, and I enjoy ranting because it gets the stank out of my system. Case in point, my most popular article by far is largely me spouting off about why I couldn’t watch Anne with an E and my disgust towards modern storytelling/remakes/reboots.
My way of balancing the stank is by recognizing that this is playground-level maturity and always adding those disclaimers that my opinions are personal takes. I was amazed by how polite every response to that article was, even the ones who loved the show or otherwise disagreed with me.
This whole Trump tactic of talking louder than his rivals is the most childishly embarrassing behavior, and the fact that it’s becoming more and more common in political discourse is… alarming to say the least. If I engage in this sort of ridiculing, I feel the need to add the disclaimer that ridicule is for venting, not dealing with important situations.
Balance.
Why Is Balance So Critical to All Aspects of Life?
For a species that is inherently complicated, we have a weird obsession with simplifying things. We try to pack more and more things into our days, and then complicate it by adding new things that are meant to make it less complicated…
That’s a bit weird, isn’t it?
You’d think that we might be looking for an optimal middle-ground between our complicated new lives and the peace of the old ways, but somehow, I don’t often see that discussed, despite seeing how desperately people seem to want it. Rather, people either go full slow-life-core, or then just become a part of the patriarchal capitalist grind. I don’t hear a lot of stories from people who have found a healthy balance between work and play.
I’m going to write a whole other article about my thoughts on identity vs individuality someday, but to suffice to say, sentient beings like us are vastly complicated creatures. Every moment of our never-pausing lives is constantly contributing to our perception of every moment that comes after it. We are nothing if not a culmination of every single thing that has ever happened to us.
And those moments have all been 100% individual.
In a species of over 8 billion.
…
Do please take a moment to let that sink in.
Most of us can barely imagine how many people that is. Our vision can’t come close to perceiving a million people at once, let alone 8 billion (which is 80 hundred million). It takes a world that’s over 40,000 km in circumference (if you were to road trip that distance without stop at 100kph, it would take just shy of 17 days) to host all of us. It is such an impossible number of people who all have deeply individual experiences.
Yet we are notorious for acting like we know everything about everything. It’s a prevalent aspect of many Western cultures.
And it’s kind of annoying, to be honest. Don’t you think it’s a bit of hubris to think you’re an expert on a thing as vastly huge and complicated as this planet and the zillions of things on it?
Examples of Finding Balance: Religion
Oh yeah, I wanna go there… don’t worry though, I won’t be long.
For interest’s sake, here’s a statistic about the number of registered believers of the main religions:
Christianity: Approximately 2.3–2.4 billion people (about 31% of the global population)
Islam: Around 1.6–1.8 billion (24%)
Hinduism: Roughly 1.1–1.2 billion (15%)
Buddhism: Approximately 500 million (6.9%)
Unaffiliated (including atheists and agnostics): About 1.1 billion (14%)
This begs a very interesting question, if we view everything through the lens of “right and wrong” and “winning and losing”…
If billions of people believe they are unquestionably right in their religious beliefs—yet those beliefs fundamentally contradict each other—then either truth is a bloodsport, or our understanding of truth needs to evolve.
Makes you think, no? They can’t all be right, but they all generally believe their religion is the “correct” one and the rest are blasphemous lies. In the end, I don’t think it’s possible that any of them are right, because truths are usually more complicated than what was written by man centuries ago. We weren’t exactly all that deep or intelligent back in the BC days, not gonna lie.
Also, on the note of hubris, isn’t it pretty arrogant for humanity to think they know the ways of God? If God is all-knowing and all-powerful and transcendent, why is He such a petty, whiny, vengeful little bitch in the Old Testament? Why are there so many contradictions? Honestly, the Christian God sounds more like a sad patriarchal man than a truly omnipotent being. Don’t understand me? Go experience an ego death, and you will. I promise.
In the end, I don’t see religions as hard truths, per se, they’re more frameworks for morality, on how to live in a certain way. Throughout my life, I have been unaffiliated, Christian, atheist, Christian, atheist, agnostic, and I am currently deeply spiritual since the passing of my adoptive son. My personal journey in religious/spiritual balance involved see what many belief systems have in common, comparing that to what’s been documented by people who have actually died, and then finding the through-lines where all of them find a degree of truth.
Balance.
What Is Bear’s Book of Balance?
Finding that through-line through different sides of life is one of the few things that fascinates me deeply in a life that is presently dominated by grief. It is rare for anything to please me as much as exploring all sorts of things—like religions—and seeing what they have in common, and then holding that up against science and recorded experience.
Discussing these polarities and how we can explore more balanced, nuanced takes is largely what the Book of Balance is about.
I genuinely believe that the answer to many of society’s issues lies in balance, and as such, I want this series to explore the healthy middle-ground between commonly discussed issues. Thanks for checking it out!
Note from the Author: If you enjoyed this article, perhaps you might enjoy reading life stories set in a fictional world where balance and care are central to most societies. If that sounds interesting, please check out my novella series, The Vitmar Chronicles… a slice-of-life coming-of-age series that follows two brothers as they navigate life’s ups and downs.
Read the free sample here — Learn about the series here — Find it on Amazon (EU link, but you can find it in all countries), Google, Kobo, and the Draft2Digital Network! Volume II is coming this summer!
