I recently had a thought:
What if we were all perfectly balanced at every moment?
My knee-jerk reaction was that I thought we would have less violence and more logic. My next thought was that we would have less passion. Less creativity and innovation.
I read a book called “A first-rate madness,” by Nassir Ghaemi. It talks about the power of several people who had what is now classified as Bipolar. Teddy Roosevelt read a book a day. It was as if he had endless energy. He was charismatic. Much of this was attributed to the illness. He was a leader.
JFK was another. Much of the same characteristics. A combinations of the meds he had to take for another medical condition and mental illness drove him to be what he was, which is a leader.
But…some leaders may benefit from having a littler more balance.
Adolph Hitler had bipolar. He was a leader.
What interested me most was the way Hitler tried to balance (or lake thereof) himself. His doctor treated him with methamphetamines. It was in a hard candy-type form. He would pop them through the day. Highly overdosing. Becoming more and more erratic. More and more agitated. Before all of the chaos, Hitler was an artist.
The book talks about his obsessive nature on topics and his passion of opinion. His friend went to the theater with him and Hitler was struck with an epiphany. He had a huge vision. To me, when the friend described what Hitler was like, it sounded like he was experiencing something between hypo and hypermania.
In my opinion, the world would be a much better place if our chemicals were perfectly balanced at all time. I think art would live on, but wouldn’t cut as deep. Poetry would flow, but not as eloquently. Ideas would grow, but not as big. But overall, life would go on. Life would probably go on for a bit longer. All in all, it’s a balancing act. Maybe that’s the whole point.