Balance

I have known for a very long time that balance is one of the most important laws of existence. I knew it even when I met you.

At university, I encountered several theories that dealt with balance in one form or another. There was thermodynamic equilibrium, in which a system reaches a state where the processes taking place within it balance each other out. According to Le Chatelier’s principle, when a system in equilibrium is disturbed by some external influence, it will respond in a way that attempts to counteract the change. And Newton’s third law puts it more simply: every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

But dynamic equilibrium has always been my favorite.

Because dynamic equilibrium doesn’t mean that nothing is happening.

Quite the opposite.

Changes are constantly taking place within the system, forces act upon one another, things come into existence and disappear, while from the outside it appears as though everything is standing still. Balance is not the absence of change. It is when the changes somehow balance each other out.

I have always loved that idea.

Perhaps because I felt that life was exactly the same.

When something is thrown out of balance, something else tries to pull it back. When we lose something, something else comes to take its place. When we take something away from someone, perhaps one day we have to pay for it ourselves.

Back then, I didn’t know how literally I would have to take all of this.

I didn’t know that balance isn’t always restored within the same lifetime.

And I didn’t know that when I met you, it wasn’t actually the first time we had met...

I almost forgot to introduce myself.

My name is Hanna Briar. I attended Westbridge University, where I studied physics, with quantum physics being my primary area of interest. I’m thirty-four years old, and I worked in the Applied Quantum Research Division of the research center until the day I was selected for that particular experiment.

I know that certain esoteric traditions, and even psychology, deal with balance and fulfillment.

Taoism, for example, sees balance in the complementary opposites of yin and yang. Neither one is meant to defeat the other; together, they form a whole. Positive and negative, light and darkness, active and passive cannot exist without each other.

I encountered similar ideas in psychology as well. According to Freud, there is a constant tension between the instincts and desires within us and reality, as well as social expectations, and the psyche strives toward some kind of resolution. Gestalt psychology, on the other hand, places more emphasis on the idea that the different, sometimes contradictory parts of a person form a complete whole, and that recognizing and accepting them can bring us closer to being in harmony with ourselves.

But Jung is my favorite.

Perhaps because he didn’t simply talk about finding balance, but also about the necessity of opposites. The conscious and the unconscious, the light and the shadow, the accepted and rejected parts of ourselves are constantly influencing one another. According to Jung, the psyche functions as a self-regulating system: when something within us becomes too one-sided, something else tries to counterbalance it.

“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”

I have always loved that thought.

Perhaps because I don’t think life is as simple as everything being black or white, right or wrong. Sometimes two opposing things have to exist for either one of them to have any meaning at all.

And perhaps balance doesn’t mean that everything remains the same.

Perhaps it simply means that when something is thrown too far off balance, something else will eventually pull it back.

I’m writing a letter to the person I love.

I’m about to tell him what I’ve realized.

While I’m away, he’ll have time to process the information in the letter. I hope I come back and can continue loving him without a care in the world.

Because that’s what the law of balance is about.

Isn’t it?

There’s something else you need to know about me.

My height is completely average, and I have an athletic build. I have long, shiny, silver-blonde hair and green eyes.

If we go by stereotypes, I look like a fucking bimbo. Definitely not a scientist.

I always find people’s skeptical expressions amusing when I start speaking, and instead of some silly, demure little sentences, something intelligent actually comes out of my mouth.

Sometimes I even play up the bimbo look.

Not because it bothers me that people see me that way. Quite the opposite.

It amuses me.

There is something particularly provocative about being a scientist when you look like this.

At least according to the masses.

But let’s leave the masses out of this. They were what they were, and they haven’t changed. The masses haven’t become much more refined in two thousand years.

Seneca, Nero’s tutor, wrote quite a lot about the masses. Not without reason. He knew perfectly well how easy it was for a person to lose their own sound judgment when they got too close to the crowd.

“Rip yourself away from the crowd.”

That was the advice he gave Lucilius.

Perhaps that’s why I like Seneca, too.

Or perhaps because some thoughts don’t lose their truth even after two thousand years.

Yes, here is this sheet of snow-white paper in front of me. Where was I in the letter?

…when I finally fell head over heels in love with you, I already knew that in this lifetime, our debts to each other would be settled.

Whether that will be a good thing? That is far from certain. But I had a choice. I had the chance to choose whether I wanted to settle all of this in this lifetime, or, knowing everything I knew, continue down a different path.

Whatever it means that our debts are being settled this way in this lifetime, every time I look at you, I feel it to the depths of my soul that this is how it has to be.

Others simply drift along with fate.

I was lucky. I had the power to choose consciously.

If I don’t come back from 1789, it means our debts weren’t settled. I promise we’ll meet again.

I loved you every single minute we spent together, Julian.

Hanna, yours forever

July 14, 2026

This is how it all began.

As part of the time-travel experiment, I had to travel precisely to the year 1789.

To where it all began.