At the end of Inception, Leo spins a metal top to see if he is floating on the piece of wood at the end of Titanic. It was just his way of figuring out if he was still in reality where a woman really would not share some of the plank with him or if he was in a dream state where he would wake up soon and the unsinkable Titanic didn’t really sink.

Yesterday, I was walking on the treadmill, which is one of the two places I get inspiration for posts. As I was daydreaming about this post being so good that it accidentally got discovered by an agent who would call me and ask me to write the next New York Times best-selling book, I lost my balance and almost fell off the treadmill. It might have to do with my general lack of concentration, or the fact that I have one leg that is taller than the other.

Luke Skywalker is a weird farming kid that lives on a planet called Tatooine, where they produce the world’s best Tatoo’s. To make a really long story short, he would someday become a Jedi, a world class electric sword user, and someone who can control a thing called the Force. The problem is that he has a jerkus father who is also a world-class user of the electric sword and can work the Force as well. There’s also a twin sister involved as well, but these people are always working to balance this force thing.

These are just three examples of what I call the secret to the universe. One Word. Balance. There is a constant battle to get to the center in order to achieve true bitterness.

No one will ever achieve true perfect bitterness for long. I teeter on the edge of it very closely, but I’m always a degree or two from the true center, which in itself makes me more bitter.

Most people never even try to achieve bitterness. They try for the extreme emotions like happy or miserable, but they don’t understand that those things will never help you achieve a true bitter balance. They are like Darth Vader slaughtering younglings. Yeah, those kids were a little whiny and annoying, but we shouldn’t slaughter children. We should make them do their homework, or come up with the most sadistic punishments for them, like taking their phones away for an hour, but probably not slaughter them. Who else can we use the force on to make them do the chores we don’t want to do?

Our lives are in a constant state of MAD (Mutally Assured Destruction) where one side of us gets a little too extreme and then the other side has to bring it back to a balance (see this old blog post if you want to learn more about Mutually Assured Destruction). Every movie, TV show, every book or even short story exists because one side of the universe is either weebling or wobbling (google the toy from the 80’s if you are one of these younglings). An imbalance in the Force if you will.

Eventually, the end of every story gets a “Bitter Balance” moment, where the hero or the anti-hero learns the lesson they are supposed to learn. Inevitably the really bad sequel with make them weeble or wobble again. For all the things you learned in Back to the Future, (Cubs won the World Series in 2015, Face Time would exist in 2015, cars would be flying, etc.), the thing we really learn is one simple, stupid thing that could have prevented the whole 3 movie arch. If Marty McFly could figure out how to not overreact about being called a chicken, we could have been spared this threequel movie masterpiece.

You’ve all been seeking the answer to life for so long. Little did you know that you would find the answer to ALL your questions in one simple word on one simple blog post.

That makes you owe me big time. In order to swing the universe back to the center, I believe large sums of money are weighing you all down, and my bank account is currently too light. Thus, you should all pay me large sums of money for solving all your problems. Yes, it’s a deal. Start sending them. Do it. Now.

While I’m waiting for you to send the money, let’s do some Bitter Friday Giftures…

Cats can somehow…

Of course…

Hey, if it wasn’t for humans…

It seems like too many goats…

Luckily…

Some goats…

Some need the Force…

Others need a balance…

Some have the need to balance…

Other people think they need…

Dads think they need…

Some judges think they can bring…

While others…

Others just need to find…

These are the key takeaways: The key to life is bitter balance. If you can’t be perfectly bitter, you aren’t trying hard enough. On the other hand, perfect bitterness doesn’t last long, so when those moments happen, savor them. The third thing you should know is that true bitterness is rare and you will spend your whole life bitter because you aren’t there very much.

ARRRRGGGGHHHHHH

Bitter Balanced Ben