The power of the paradox
Because mind-fucks are fun and freeing
[Read time: 5 minutes]
I recently realised that many of the things and people I love the most are purveyors of paradox; they seem contradictory, but somehow their inner conflicts and complexities transmute them into sources of more truth or more beauty than their simple, straightforward counterparts. Why on earth is this?! My curiosity led me down a thought spiral (the good kind). Well, actually back down a familiar thought spiral - I wrote my undergrad dissertation on a similar theme, but a lot geekier and more Greek.
Eventually, my guy Carl Jung offered me a fresh take on the issue:
“Only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.”
The thing is, the human experience wouldn’t be very human without its many inherent paradoxes. Being human is messy. This is why many of us feel compelled to reject the singularly shiny narratives we see on social media, and/or the singularly shitty stories we read in the news. Each provides us with a partial truth of life, but rarely the full mixed picture. This is also why art and music and stories and people that carry real nuance are so precious: they are rare, especially in an age of clickbait, echo chambers and growing political polarisation. In short, paradoxes move us because they remind us of our very humanness.
Think about it: what are some paradoxical things that may seem initially contrary or perhaps hard to understand, yet upon closer inspection hold a kind of transcendent sense? Or truth? Or beauty? Here a few that sprung to mind for me:
Laughing while crying
Gender fluidity
Love and loss
‘I’m still angry, but I forgive you.’
Cheesecake
Tactical voting
‘I’m straight, but I’m attracted to her.’
Non-dual philosophy
Feeling the fear and doing it anyway
Multi-racialism
Breakfast for dinner
‘I need space, but I’m not leaving.’
Being silent in good company
Sausage dogs (my favourite)
Some of these paradoxes are delightfully trivial (I mean, just look at those ears). They tease, tickle and titillate us! Because pleasure and play are quintessential to the human experience, after all. But some of the others are big or scary or painful. Many of us find these confusing, existential kinds of paradoxes so hard to face that we go into denial or avoidance. We repress. We reject ourselves or others presenting us with them. We default to whatever our trusty coping mechanisms are (i.e. food, booze, doom scrolling, blame shifting, etc.) You choose your favourite flavour! These are very normal (and often subconscious) human behaviours, but paradox intolerant ones nonetheless.
There are also other more subtle ways of circumnavigating life’s painful paradoxes, like fixing ourselves to either end of a spectrum in order to avoid being in the messy middle - that unknown, uncertain, uncomfortable space. For example, sometimes struggles with paradox masks themselves as ultra-confidence in your rightness (i.e. dogmatism) or paranoia about your wrongness (i.e. insecurity), or else perhaps in ultra-negativity (i.e. hopelessness) or ultra-positivity (i.e. bypassing). There is truth to be found on either end of a spectrum if you look hard enough for it, but usually only partial truth. Reality (if such a thing exists) is almost always more nuanced.
‘The opposite of paradox is polarisation.’
When I heard renowned relationships expert Esther Perel say this on a podcast episode, I had to pause and listen again. She’s right - it’s not the existence of tension that creates polarisation; it’s the resistance to it. Black and white thinking is caused by discomfort with grey areas. Our minds naturally seek to make sense of new or difficult things by flicking through the archives of our understanding and trying to find a place for them - a category, a label, a clear judgement: yes or no; good or bad; left or right; ugly or pretty; sink or swim; friend or foe; in or out; win or lose; man or woman; love or hate. It is much easier, much safer to operate like this because we don’t have to challenge the way we think and we don’t have to linger on the tricky emotions that arise with ambiguity or complexity. Yet if we reject or avoid these things, we fall prey to the kind of insidious over-simplification that either ignores or straight up denies the most colourful aspects of the human condition - both our own and that of others. This is no way to live. It is certainly no way to love. Meanwhile, through holding paradoxes, we can create a playground of infinite possibilities, because they serve to loosen polarities in a way that makes everything more fluid, allowing other ways of thinking, doing and being to emerge. Paradoxically (of course), there is a rich vibrancy to be found in grey areas.
Here’s my latest theory: the struggle to hold paradox is one of the main sources of the world’s pain and strife. I have come to believe that the extent to which we can fend off binary thinking and be comfortable with living in the grey is directly proportional to our ability to embrace change, confront confusion and experience life fully.
This isn’t just a thought experiment - it has the potential for real world impact. In fact, holding multiple truths is one of the defining features of the most advanced levels of Loevinger’s nine stages of adult ego development (1996) - a fascinating look at how human personalities and consciousness develop over time. In essence, being a high functioning, mature adult necessitates holding complexity and reconciling paradoxes. And this in turn requires intellectual intelligence, emotional intelligence and interpersonal intelligence. In practice, this means actively learning the corresponding skills, such as dialectical reasoning, emotional regulation and & conflict resolution. These skills are not easy one by one, let alone all together. This is why many adults wander around behaving like overgrown children in one way or another, often without even realising it. We’re all guilty of this at times!
It all sounds a bit serious though, right? Well, maybe there’s a cheeky bonus extra skill here, which is to hold paradoxes with some lightness - to dance with them, play with them and sometimes tell the tricky ones to just take a day off as you enjoy a glass of wine and a good giggle. This is integral to adulting effectively, too! And it is not avoidance when done consciously - it’s more like transcendence. Often the process of simply holding paradoxes reconciles them and discharges some of their tension, making way for deeper levels of connection, authenticity and joy. In this sense, mind-fucks really can be fun and freeing.
Ultimately, within skills like these lurks the potential to help us build our resilience and creativity, to enjoy more enduring and healthy relationships and even to temper political polarisation or extremism. It’s through them that we can numb less, avoid less, feel more and hold more as we navigate the mixed bag of life. That is the power of learning to sit with a juicy paradox.
Legendary professor and emotions expert Brené Brown once proclaimed that:
'The mark of a wild heart is living out the paradox of love in our lives. It's the ability to be tough and tender, excited and scared, brave and afraid all in the same moment.’
Maybe I am drawn to complex, paradoxical things and people because they mirror this wild-hearted, complex, messy kind of love. And maybe, just maybe, learning to embrace paradox is actually a paradigm for being more human.