Have you ever looked at a paradoxical sentence? Have you ever really stared at it? Consumed it with your entire being and let it hang within your soul, stirring around, making all this ruckus within you that makes you shift unevenly in your seat from time to time without knowing why?
Being abnormal is normal. Being normal is abnormal.
Truths are found in paradoxes. That’s what I believe. Not truth as in knowledge, but as in the truth that’s rarely acquired; wisdom.
If I told a computer program that it had to hold the notion “You are unique like no one else,” and the notion “You are the same, like everyone else,” as both being right and equal it’d exploded faster than you could say discombobulated. But if I told you that, and you actually thought about it for a second or two, you’d realize “Hey, maybe Arsene’s on to something!” And yes, there are many types of paradoxes, but for brevity’s sake I’m only talking about philosophical paradoxes (the one’s that relate to living a better life).
But this news isn’t new, philosophers far grandeur than me have brooded on such topics long before I came along. I’m just here to raise my hand in collective agreement with these amazing ponderers of life.
Wisdom is found in the paradox:
- Less is more. More is less.
- Impossible is usually possible.
- Passion destroys passion.
- The job of fiction is to tell the truth.
- Obtaining everything means having nothing.
- When you accept yourself as you are, then you can change.
- Pain is pleasure. Pleasure is pain.
- The more you know, the more you know the less you know.
- You must be willing to die in order to live.
- You have no choice in making a choice. You are doomed to make choices. You cannot not make a choice.
- You say more when you say less.
- Work is more fun than fun.
- The only constant is change.
- Everything changes, yet everything stays the same.
- The best way to be comfortable is to be uncomfortable. The best way to be uncomfortable is to comfortable.
- Sometimes the smartest thing to do in a situation is to be stupid. Sometimes the stupidest thing is to be smart.
Even the grasping of a truth is in itself a paradox. The truth looks foolish to the fools, and wise to the wise. The truth is simple, but it’s also so complicated that you should be laughing at my measly attempt to capture it in less than 1,000 words. (But that just leads us to another paradox, “The longer a piece of writing is the less it’s read.”)
Truths are conflicting at their base. They’re not black or white, or good or bad; They’re transcendent of these labels. For good and bad, black and white are labels we created (and asinine one’s at that). Which is why paradoxes are usually considered grey in color. They are complicated, reflecting life in their own existence. Life isn’t simple, there’s no one certain answer for all situations, and good does not necessarily always mean good. (One man’s good can be another’s bad.)
Saying that a truth is simple is being oxymoronic (emphasis on the moronic). Saying that a truth is paradoxical (complicated) is being redundant… So I’m being redundant (but to prove a point).
Maybe this is why every single human is a hypocrite. We don’t ever aim to be hypocrites, but it always happens at one point or another, and just when you think you won’t be one, you are. For me, this is our subconscious at work. The subconscious isn’t as picky about the truth as our conscious minds are. Our conscious minds see truth, but shun it when it doesn’t agree with our currently held beliefs (“Everything must be either black or white!,” we tell ourselves.). But our subconscious always acts on truth, or at least always tries to (some of us have the uncanny ability of fighting with and winning over our subconscious).
F. Scott Fitzgerald said it best, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
In order for us to grow, we’re going to have to stop screaming for everything to be black or white; for everything to be simple. We’re going to have to get it through our thick skulls that truths are grey, complicated, and messy – and rarely do they get along with each other.
To see truth you’re going to have to work at it. It won’t be given to you on a silver-platter. It’ll be in the rumble, underneath propaganda, doctrines, age old practices, and stereotypes. You’re going to have to think, every single moment. You’re going to have to fully inspect all ideas that dare enter the territory that is your mind. Don’t take the easy route and go with the simple black or white answers. Train yourself as Fitzgerald said by holding two opposing thoughts in your head as both right (paradoxes). Train yourself every day until you look at all held ‘simple truths’ with scepticism in your eyes.
Truths speak in paradoxes. It’s a foreign language for many of us, but one that we can learn with practice.
photo credit: Brett Jordan