Contradictions

Contradictions are a vital substrate of the soul, a marbled interiority, often subtle, secretive, and conveniently missed when they are personal, our very essence riddled with a wondrous collection of tensions we barely notice if all is well, yet easily unearthed by the tectonics of loss and grieving, passionate life and living, and the generally unsettling nature of being and becoming. When you lose a loved one, you may become overwhelmed with feelings of unspeakable sorrow, and swellings of immeasurable joy and gratitude, simultaneously, for one whose presence has enriched your life and lingers with you still. Similarly, when you fall in love with another, and commit yourself to journeying together, you will find yourself humbled by needing to forgive and be forgiven, innumerable times, and at the same time elevated by the intimacy of really seeing another and being seen, knowing and being known deeply by another. What logically appears as mutually exclusive or contradictory—joy and sorrow, exaltation and abasement—finds natural coexistence and cohabitation in the soul.

I am a bundle of contradictions. As are you. But the rational mind loves to see order and coherence, even if that order and coherence comes at the cost of obscuring rich complexities, churning within every person and situation, covering paradox and creative tensions with crustations of would-be certainty and simplicity, an artificial confidence in the binary: right and wrong, true and false, black and white, and the consolations afforded by viewing reality in these either/or terms. Whoever lusts after coherence, lusts after lies, Howard Jacobson noticed. And our perception of contradictions themselves may be the greatest lie of all, one that exists only on the surface level of logic and which quickly vanishes, as we find ourselves increasingly immersed in the beautiful, heartbreaking, nuanced uncertainties of actual living. Noticing within yourself an emerging number of contradictory feelings, thoughts, and experiences might be the surest sign of living a soulful life.