Balance (or equilibrium)

The key to life is balance. Most systems tend towards balance and equilibrium in their ideal states, whether they be physical, biological, emotional or philosophical. Here are some examples:

Joy and Sadness

Emotions, including joy and sadness, can be thought of as existing in a kind of equilibrium or cycle. It’s often said that you can’t know true happiness without knowing sadness, and vice versa. From a philosophical perspective, the existence of one implies the existence of the other, as they are opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. In some ways, this could be considered an emotional mean reversion, where our emotional state doesn’t stay at one extreme or the other forever but oscillates around a sort of emotional equilibrium over time.

If the Joy and Sadness are the crest and the wave, then the equilibrium position, the zero-crossing point - the x-axis - is surely a state of contentment. That is the fulcrum around which healthy, mature emotions oscillate. Emotional stability might be seen as minimising the amplitude of the wave so that it never deviates too far from the midpoint.

Mean Reversion

In statistics, mean reversion refers to the concept that over time, data series or returns will tend to move back towards the mean or average. This principle is the foundation for many trading strategies and economic forecasts.