Embracing Balance in a World of Chaos by Jahsean

Embracing Balance in a World of Chaos by Jahsean - October 2025 Scholarship Essay

“I took Gotham’s white knight and I brought him down to our level.”

In a dark room filled with the remnants of a forgotten funhouse, the Joker confesses his master plan. The moment he destabilizes Batman's morality taught me that if we become detached as much as the unsteady world we live in, we cannot regain control.

By the time he throws Commissioner Gordon's daughter off a building, Joker establishes that life is a game of chance and any morality we possess is merely a masquerade. As he captures Gotham amidst organized carnage, he demonstrates how the desire for ultimate structure creates inflexibility: Batman's "never" mentality blinds him to Joker's endgame; by attempting to dominate each situation, he could almost be predicted.

As I watch him destabilize Gotham in a series of chaotic events, I realize that both extremes possess the power to destroy me. When the Joker throws in a living truth of crime, that everyone loves a clown, he capitalizes on our fear that extremes lead nowhere good. He wears his friendly yet maniacal face to remind us that order or disorder is never our best interest but creates successful urges.

That message resounded in me Junior Year as I became preoccupied with debate team captaincy. I’d spend hours practicing counterarguments, dissecting sources' intentions, and teaching teammates how to articulate with immaculate precision. I did my best to control every aspect of the room, from tone of voice to timing and even room setup, to create a guaranteed winning formula.

However, in my pursuit of perfection, I neglected opportunity and human connection. I started to see my opponents as competitive enemies rather than peers on the same educational journey. Still shouldering that burden, when a rival team threw in a random issue neither side expected, my carefully crafted protections failed me. I panicked, froze, and allowed a definitive victory to slip from my hands.

In retrospect, I understood the Joker's message. His point wasn't chaos but how we fear chaos more than chaos itself. Therefore, my obsession with control transformed what should have been a debate team into an Oscar-nominated performance. I needed to find my way back to passion, the passion of engagement, which depended upon adversity.

I began holding spontaneous practice sessions with random topics thrown and judged, with an emphasis on adaptability to whichever side presented itself at any given moment. We welcomed different arguments instead of rehearsing our versions ad nauseam.

Before long, I felt liberated; my arguments regained merit, and my teammates found new avenues to approach their cases. While we still practiced rigorously before competitions, we no longer equated perfection with guaranteed success; instead, we prided ourselves on malleable skill sets that remained most effective when the unexpected arose.

Ultimately, Joker's message reminds us that life isn't meant to be perfected; life is meant to be understood and upheld through extreme flexibility. While we may value our ultimate morals, our lives can take rapid changes at any moment; if we can't adapt to such chaos, we'll succumb to chaos despite what we feared most.

Therefore, as I move into a career where system design depends on structural implementations, I know that too much rigidity yields poor connections and schools of thought while too much levity destroys safety and reliability measures. My understanding of the legacy Joker leaves will guide me through projects suggesting how technology can empower instead of control people, if only they'd let it be so.

The Joker taught me that no code is unbendable, in an uncertain world, it's okay if it all goes wrong.