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On Balance

2025-08-12 · letter vlog · John · 4:33 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Health (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: heavy topic, self promotion

John, whose vertigo from his 2017 labyrinthitis returned a couple of weeks ago, reflects that balance (of the body, of work and life, of brain chemistry) goes unnoticed until it is lost, and resolves to practise gratitude for it while it lasts.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — John's 2017 fall when his balance failed; balance as a sense beyond the five senses

  • ★★★ John recalls that on a Monday afternoon in 2017, while rummaging through a drawer, his sense of balance suddenly failed; he fell to the floor and started vomiting. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John says balance is a sense, or part of one: the idea of only five senses is an oversimplification, as there are also nociception and proprioception, of which balance is part. — 00:00:12
  • ★★★ John says you don't notice your sense of balance when it works: he can describe what he smells, sees, hears, tastes and touches, but not his balance, because it is functioning. — 00:00:24

00:00:29 — Balance goes unnoticed while it works; what vertigo feels like; his vertigo has returned

  • ★★ John says vertigo is almost impossible to explain to someone who has never had it; comparisons like a small boat on a heaving ocean or being spun around fall short because those feelings end. — 00:00:43
  • ★★★ For John the defining experience of vertigo was not the dizziness but not knowing how long it would last, or whether his balance would ever be restored. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ John says he is making this video because his vertigo returned a couple of weeks ago (late July 2025). — 00:01:10

00:01:27 — The 2017 hospital visit, labyrinthitis diagnosis and its lasting effects on his balance

  • ★★ John recalls that with vertigo in 2017 he was in bed for two weeks unable to open his eyes; his other senses did not matter and the imbalance was all-consuming. — 00:01:30
  • ★★ Sarah took John to the hospital, where they first tried the Epley maneuver, moving his head and body to rearrange the crystals in his inner ear; it failed and made him vomit more. — 00:01:40 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★ John says a kind of vertigo called, he thinks, BPPV can be cured by the Epley maneuver within seconds without further tests. (hedged) — 00:01:50
  • ★★ Since vertigo can have scary causes, the hospital gave John a CT scan of his head; his brain was, in his doctor's word, unremarkable. — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ John was eventually diagnosed with labyrinthitis, when a virus or something attacks the inner ear; in some cases, including his, balance is never fully restored. — 00:02:10
  • ★★ John says his balance now relies much more on visual cues: in the dark he can stumble and start to get vertigo, and a cold or unknown causes can also set it off. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ John says a recurrence is pretty terrifying because you don't know whether it will last forever. — 00:02:40

00:02:55 — Other imbalances (work-life, brain chemistry), forgetfulness as a barrier to empathy, and practising gratitude; sign-off

  • ★★★ John says other kinds of balance work the same way in his life: he takes balance for granted and notices, for instance, his work-life balance only when it is off. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ John says he notices the balance of his brain chemicals only when they are imbalanced and cause his OCD or depression. — 00:03:05
  • ★★★ John says he feels only abstract gratitude for not having vertigo, unlike the magic of it going away; if he could hold on to that gratitude he would emanate it forever, but he moves on to other problems. — 00:03:24
  • ★★ John says this forgetfulness is a feature of human consciousness, useful for survival, but it can be a barrier to empathy, even toward ourselves. — 00:03:35 · empathy
  • ★★ John says he cannot remember what having meningitis felt like, not in the acute way he remembers scents or sights. — 00:03:53
  • ★★★ John says that when he has his balance, or any sense, he needs to become aware of it by practising gratitude for it. — 00:04:00
  • ★★ John says that free from pain he can be in all kinds of things, in trouble, in love, in a story, but in pain it is hard to be in anything else. — 00:04:10
  • ★★★ On days he feels okay, John tries to remind himself to look at this balance: a gift, even if temporary and unpredictable. — 00:04:17

In the description and comments

  • ★ The description asks viewers to get the brothers' underwear through the Awesome Undies Club monthly subscription at Good Store. — video description · Good Store

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: equilibrioception · gratitude · labyrinthitis · Vertigo

Also: People: Sarah Urist Green

Concepts: benign paroxysmal positional vertigo · CT scan · depression · empathy · Epley maneuver · hedonic adaptation · meningitis · nociception · obsessive-compulsive disorder · proprioception · sense · work-life balance

Only in the description or credits: Awesome Undies Club · Good Store

Also centred on gratitude: The Things that People Do (Thoughts from New York City) (Pizzamas Day 7) · We Could All Use a Little Change · My Greatest Tool Against Vaccine Misinformation · I am Grateful for My Worry · I Just Can't Do It Anymore · My Deathday

Also centred on labyrinthitis: The Anthropocene Reviewed, Animated · My Physicalmental Illness · My Next Book

Also centred on Vertigo: I Got a New Disease and I Kinda Liked It.

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