ON THE OTHER HAND
Do I contradict myself?
– Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I do like it when things appear fairly straight-forward. Knowing who I am, where I stand, solid in my position relative to the rest of it. When life seems predictable enough and it simply makes sense, more or less. When what shows up is mostly familiar, and any new information can fit neatly into what I think I’ve already got figured out. It’s easier when it’s like that.
No matter how comforting I find such tidiness and order, however… it never turns out to be the whole story. Not really. Not if I spend more than a superficial moment with it.
A second look is usually all it takes to reveal greater depth, complexity, and nuance. A second thought is all it takes to bare the inherent contradictions in pretty much anything and everything. The more time I spend with any idea, any thing, any one, with myself, even — the more I find us completely baffling.
We’re really something. And we’re something else. We’re this, and the total opposite that we hadn’t thought of yet, and the possibility of everything in-between. There’s nothing straightforward about any of it.
This can be challenging to reckon with. Because we’ve learned to manage our lives by ordering and categorizing everything that comes our way — good, bad, desirable, abhorrent, helpful, hindering, friend, foe. We evaluate, assess, and judge our way to workability. It can just feel like too much, otherwise. For heaven’s sake, the less ambiguity we have to muddle through, the better. The more clear-cut we can make it, the better. Or so it seems — at first.
The trouble with a compulsion for clarity is that it tends to entrench us in narrower and narrower viewpoints. It can precipitate partisanship, dogmatism, intellectual and creative stagnation, ignorance, prejudice, and fear. It closes our minds and hearts.
So on one hand, we’ve got this world of variety, complexity, and paradox — in which, the more we look, the less obvious everything becomes. And on the other hand, we’ve got a built-in, sense-making, self-protective desire for simplicity and order. Of course we’re stressed.
We have more information than ever before, more knowledge, more data, more analysis. About ourselves, each other, and the natural world from outer space to the subatomic realm. We’ve got more intricate and connected communications systems — real-time information about anything we want to scroll for. It seems like this should be a good thing, a useful thing. But I think maybe it’s only useful to the degree that we’re able to be with the contradictions of it. With our deep uncertainty and ambivalence in it.
I’d heard this term before, but was reintroduced to it this week: contronym. A contronym is a word that carries two opposite meanings. As a language nerd, I find these delightful, so I immediately began to assemble lists of them. English has a lot.
For example: DUST can mean either: a) to sprinkle with fine particles, or b) to remove them. CLIP can signify: a) to attach something, or b) to cut something off. BUCKLE = a) to connect together, and b) to collapse. ROCK = a) an immobile mass of stone or figuratively similar phenomenon, and b) shaking or unsettling movement, and c) soothing movement.
The words can convey either. Context might give us clues as to which meaning is intended. Our own interpretation has a part in determining what anything, ultimately, means. Typically, we’re expected to choose one or the other, to mean one or the other. But the larger truth that the word includes both meanings. The word itself is both/and, containing a thing as well as its opposite.
On one hand, something can be FIXED — repaired, made whole. On the other hand, it’s FIXED — castrated. On one hand, we’re FINISHED — doomed. On the other hand, we’re FINISHED — complete.
The linguistics are so clever, round and round, they make me dizzy. And it seems to me a perfect illustration of how the world is. And how we are. Everything and its antithesis, the gamut, the spectrum, the entire enchilada.
I’m trying to stay with this discomforting lack of definition. To let my certainties unravel a little. To allow the stark black and white of things to soften and brighten, with a deeper look, into a rainbow. I wonder what might be available if I were able to resist knee-jerk categorizations, the judgments to which I’m habitually inclined to default.
I suspect that I’d find more relatedness where before I could see only rancor. Freedom where there first appeared nothing but limitation. A range of possibilities and choices instead of a thin absolutism narrower than the eye of a needle. Maybe I wouldn’t despair quite so much when things didn’t work out as I hoped, because I’d remember that the simplicity of “good” and “bad” doesn’t really even tell the half of it. I bet I’d feel more overall peace, equanimity, connection, and flow.
Contronyms are also called “antagonyms.” That’s revealing, for sure, conveying how contradiction tends to feel like antagonism. But in the spirt of the thing — what if contradiction ultimately proved to be the key to wholeness? Our own and everyone’s, the world’s. Antagonists becoming allies, obstacles including opportunities.
It’s a TRIP — a stumble. And a TRIP — what a journey.
I can’t wait to be with you this Sunday, September 22, at 10:00am at q-Staff Theatre. With the divine Patty Stephens. XO, Drew
©2024 Drew Groves
