my entire life consists of this same struggle. life is an endless balancing act of extremes, which itself is an extreme balancing act. there is no such thing as perfect balance, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that balance exists on an unstable equilibrium. like a ball on the top of a mountain, it only takes a nudge in any direction for its balance to be completely broken.
when i blink one eye, i need to blink the other. if i touch the corner of this laptop, i feel the urge to touch the other three corners. if i look to the top right of my field of view, i feel the urge to look to the bottom left, then the top left, then the bottom right kind of like replacing a tire. i don't know if all humans feel this urge or if it's just my excessive sensitivity to symmetry, but the desire to feel physical balance plagues my senses.
however, i crave asymmetry. the disjointed shapes of yohji yamamoto's clothes, the robots on U.N.K.L.E's album Psyence Fiction, and the shape of a fender jazzmaster catch my eye for that exact reason. to have more on one side than the other, differentiating something from itself by means of dimension is to me how asymmetry bombards the mind. where symmetry invokes satisfaction and peace, asymmetry cracks open a pandora's box. the frustration of folding something and it not aligning, or having weakness on one side but strength in the other, it is all a game of asymmetry.
often times, what seems to be asymmetry is what creates symmetry. symmetry in form could lead to asymmetry in function, like a golf club with no beveled edge or having two swords but no shield. realizing that symmetry and asymmetry do not only act as opposite but can often be exploited as complements unlocks aesthetic and pragmatic horizons otherwise overlooked out of obsession for symmetry. unbalanced looks can create balanced results and vice versa, so if symmetry does not seem to solve the problem, theres an infinitely more vast realm of aymmetry that can be tapped into.
personality is a very volatile concept when it comes to describing someone. words can rarely encapsulate someone's personality well enough to create a clear image of the person. the only way to truly know someone is to physically come in contact with them, and even after some interaction you still wouldn't get anywher near the perfect representation of their personality, much less put it into words. the worst part is nobody truly has a consistent personality; everybody is constantly reinventing their personality to fit accomodate people, occasions, and situations, so why even bother compartmentalizing people into personalities?
my father has combed through around a dozen different types of personality tests: the mbti, ocean, and even animal archetypes, but his conclusion was that in order to really know someone you have to interact with them for 20 years, then you can just barely say you know the person's personality. people tend to accelerate this process, unironically calling people brother or best friend and calling out those same people for betrayal or snitching. as much as i hate treachery, how quickly does the conclusion come that betrayal comes from the heart? it would take a lifetime of observation and interaction to truly understand the motivations of even a single person. deep down we all know that personality is complex and nigh impossible to reason with, so perhaps that is why we try to simplify it to a seemingly complex but actually primitive degree.
one particular concept of personality that i find exasperating is the concept of intro/extroversion. i have seen so called introverts interact in ways so called extroverts wouldn't dare to and i have seen extroverts retreat to solitude in ways introverts shudder at. is extroversion therefore a spectrum? can you be a 60/40 intro/extro split and call yourself an introvert? what about 55/45? i don't like answering the questions of my "vertedness" because the next second i always betray that expectation. i call myself extroverted but recoil when asked to order food, or i call myself an introvert and go on long rants like this very page, so what am i? my conclusion is that vertedness is a situational preference that adjusts for the environment.
the term 'life is not fair' itself is hardly fair. it assumes that in the spontaneity of life that there even is a notion of fairness, of equilibrium being reached. who decides on this equilibrium, and what is that exact point? one frame of reference may designate a lion killing a deer to have a disproportionate advantage, but when you zoom out and view things from the outside nature would not survive if not for the small killings and births that happen every second.
human life, however, is hardly dictated by nature. humans pride themselves on overcoming nature and essentially holding their foot on the proverbial neck of the threats of nature. we are weak animals, with subpar balance, physical prowess, or particularly well-evolved bodily functions. we die in the cold just as we die in the heat and our appendages cannot survive in nature without either immense painful callousing or protection. the only advantage we have is an unnaturally high ability to reason and communicate, which combined give us an edge so overpowering that it allowed us to level the world we live in to our liking.
our efforts have led to what can easily be considered abuse of our resources and the slow destruction of our planet, but have we ever considered that this tendency was only natural of us? given this one specific niche difference between us and every other animal on earth, our usage of this gift inextricably led to the bastardization of the earth to a deformed canvas, but have we ever zoomed out? if nature was so fair at a macro level, what's to say our tendency to destroy the earth is 'against nature'? if humans can be suicidal, why can't nature? i am not defending the destructive nature of humanity, but i do want to propose the idea that nature, in its infinite possibilities, could easily create abominations of this sort. what's stopping industrialization from being natural? or pollution? or forever chemicals? all things on earth come from nature, and debating the applications of God's creation is a subject for discourse.
human life, however, is clearly dictate by nature. as much as we want to differentiate ourselves from animals, we are animals