Is This About Balance, or Just Wanting to Feel Both Things at Once?

It's late. The house is quiet in that thick, absorbent way. I'm scrolling, not really seeing. My thumb stops on an image. A ring. Gold. A stone divided right down the middle—deep red on one side, bright green on the other. The caption says something about "energetic balance." And I pause. Not because I believe in energy in that way, but because the visual split speaks to something. A feeling I can't name. Am I hesitating because I'm unsure—or because I care? Maybe both. The truth is, I'm tired of the word "balance." It sounds so static. Like a math problem to solve. But this ring... it doesn't look balanced. It looks dual. And that feels different.

Late night hesitation: drawn to a divided image.

What am I actually looking for here? I think about my days. The way I'm one person in meetings—focused, logical, green—and another person completely when I'm alone with a book or listening to music—soaked in feeling, red. They don't feel integrated. They feel like shifts. Sometimes the shift is graceful. Sometimes it's a jolt. Do I need to understand a symbol before wearing it? Or do I just need it to be a better symbol than "balance" for what I actually experience?

Maybe I don't want balance. Maybe I want permission. Permission to not have to blend these parts of myself into some harmonious, consistent puree. Permission to be sharp sometimes and soft others, without apologizing for the whiplash. The ring shows a clean line. A boundary. Not a blend. That feels honest.

The Fear of Being Misread

If I wore it, people would see it. Some might ask. "What's the stone?" And I'd have to say... what? "It's garnet and peridot." And then maybe, "Oh, what do they mean?" And then what? Do I recite some history I just read online? Do I say, "They're for balance," and feel like a fraud? Will people assume something about me because I wear this? That I'm into crystals, or energy work, or spiritual trends I don't actually follow?

Or worse—what if they don't ask at all? What if it just becomes part of my visual noise, another accessory, its meaning completely invisible? Is that a relief or a disappointment? What does it mean to be seen but not explained? Can I wear it and just... not explain? Can I let it be a private thing in a public space?

There's a vulnerability in wearing something that could be read as having meaning. It's like you're inviting interpretation. And interpretation can be wrong. Someone might think the red side is for passion and assume things about my love life. Someone might think the green is for money and assume I'm materialistic. Is misunderstanding something to avoid—or accept? Maybe accepting it is part of the point. Letting the symbol be misread is a practice in not controlling my own narrative so tightly.

The Motivation Check: What Am I Actually Hoping For?

Let's be brutally honest with myself. Am I wearing this to express something—or to compensate? Am I hoping that if I wear a symbol of "balance," I'll somehow become more balanced? That the external object will catalyze an internal change I can't manage on my own?

That feels... weak. And also human. We do that. We buy yoga mats hoping to become people who do yoga. We buy cookbooks hoping to become people who cook. What am I hoping this piece will hold for me? The hope itself is a kind of burden to put on a piece of metal and stone.

Maybe it's not about hoping for change. Maybe it's about seeking companionship in the unchanging. Maybe I know I'll always be this divided, shifting self. Maybe I'm not looking for a cure, but for a witness. Something solid and beautiful that says, "I see you being both things. It's okay. I'm here with you." The ring, with its unchanging division, could be that witness. It doesn't promise to fix the split. It just mirrors it. And sometimes being seen—even by an object—is enough.

A moment of checking in: what is this choice really about?

Time Without Promised Outcomes

If I did wear it, day after day... How does a symbol age with its wearer? The gold would get warmer, softer-looking. It might pick up tiny scratches—a map of all the doorframes and desk edges it encountered. The stones would stay the same. Cool, hard, their colors constant. The division would remain sharp.

Over time, the meaning I attach to it now—this late-night search for permission—would probably fade. It would just become my ring. The thing I put on without thinking. The weight on my finger when I'm typing. The flash of color I see when I reach for my coffee. Does repetition deepen meaning—or dull it? Maybe it transforms it. Maybe the grand symbolic meaning ("balance! duality!") evaporates, replaced by a thousand tiny, mundane associations. The ring I was wearing that rainy Tuesday. The ring I had on during that difficult conversation. The ring I twisted while waiting for the test results.

Its meaning would become... biographical. Personal. Not universal. And maybe that's the only kind of meaning that lasts. The kind that's woven into the fabric of a specific life, not declared by a gemstone guide.

The Unresolved Choice

So here I am. Still looking at the picture. The red and green look different in the screen's glow. Less like symbols, more like colors. The gold looks warm.

Maybe the question isn't "Do I want balance?" Maybe the question is: Can an object hold meaning without fixing it? Can I wear this divided stone and let it mean that I am sometimes divided, and that's not a flaw to correct but a fact to wear?

Maybe I don't need energetic balance. Maybe I just need a tangible reminder that I'm allowed to contain multitudes. That I can be passionate and clear-headed, emotional and logical, soft and sharp—sometimes separately, sometimes all at once. And that this doesn't mean I'm broken. It means I'm human.

The ring doesn't promise to make me whole. It just shows what wholeness might actually look like: not a smooth, uniform sphere, but a complex, beautiful assembly of distinct parts, held together by something warm and enduring.

I look at the image one last time. My cursor hovers over the corner of the screen. I could close the tab. Go to bed. Forget about it.

Or.

I could choose the witness. The companion for the divided days. The heavy, warm, silent friend for the moments when I feel both things at once, and don't know what to call it except "being alive."

I take a breath. The house is still quiet. My finger feels bare.