Deep Seek & Dickens: Finding Balance in the Year of the Snake

Frank Fitzpatrick 02/03/2025

Do the Futurists really have a clue?

In the past month alone: Deep Seek, a small Chinese tech start-up of young engineers, disrupted the $330B US AI tech boom with a boot-strapped AI system; a business tycoon, adorned with the US Presidential crown, rewrote 50 years of democratic, social, and environmental reform with the single stroke of a pen; and a small spark erupted into a fire that destroyed 40K acres of premium Los Angeles property and upended thousands of lives.

Now we’ve entered The Year of the Wooden Snake.

There are three symbolic aspects of the Wooden Snake to which I’d like to bring your attention. The first two may sound – like life itself – somewhat contradictory:

1. Midpoint (6th sign in the Chinese Zodiac) – Symbolizing Balance.
2. Midpoint – Symbolizing the Need for Balance.
3. Love & Transformation – Symbolizing the potential for Self-Cultivation.

Could these ancient symbols help us understand what to expect in the year ahead and, more importantly, what we can do to find the calm in the eye of the inevitable storms ahead?

How will we look back at today from the unpredictable lens of the future – even a year from now?

If I start by accepting that all three of the above aspects – Balance, The Need for Balance, and Self-Cultivation (through Love & Transformation) – are all dynamic and integral parts of the greater whole, I am reminded of the contrasting metaphors of Charles Dickens.

Dickens brilliantly describes the co-existing extremes of our human experience in the opening of his classic 1859 novel The Tale of Two Cities, looking back on life during the French Revolution:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” 

The truth is: We don’t know the future.

The good news is: We can learn a great deal from the wisdom of the past.

While the ego wants us to believe we can, or should, control the world around us, balance is a dynamic experience. There is no fixed point, simply a moving center or midpoint between two concurrent extremes to which we must constantly adjust to find our own center. According to the teachings of Buddhism, we can reduce our suffering in life and find greater ease and grace in the present moment by mastering this ability and following the Middle Path.

At a neurobiological level, our system longs for equilibrium. It often takes high degrees of disruption, however — biologically or psychologically, to catalyze us to move toward a place of greater balance.

The third symbolic aspect from the Year of the Snake (Self-Cultivation) may embody ancient wisdom’s greatest lesson, as well as offer us a path forward:

To find balance amid chaos and to embrace our greatest challenges while fully experiencing the joy of life’s most precious gifts, we each need to master our inner world and cultivate our potential to the fullest.

Therein lies the path that will offer us the capacity to be present and respond from a place of love, regardless of how the pendulum swings. With each step we take along the path to cultivating our highest potential out of love for something greater than ourselves, we create a ripple effect that has the power to transform the future of humanity.

I have spent my life trying to understand multiple dimensions of the human experience and to discovering the tools and processes that science, arts, and ancient wisdom offer us. I remain fascinated by what I learn and committed to helping myself and other amplify our potential in the face of this wildly unpredictable, sometimes painful, and ever-evolving adventure we call life.

While I, like all those futurists, have barely scratched the surface of all there is to know, I continue to return to one truth:  Self-mastery and love are the most heroic first steps we can take to transform our human experience, find balance in the midst of chaos, and co-create a better future.

Here’s to Amplifying the Wisdom and Co-Creating a Better Future Together,