Duality has been on my mind lately, especially as it relates to us. Something tells me that peace and progress happen when we embrace our own innate duality and accept that we are walking, talking contradictions. Hotbeds of hypocrisy, that's us. Though maybe hypocrisy is not the right word--perhaps living, breathing paradoxes, each one of us.
I'm in a period of intense self-study, trying to make peace with difficult parts of my life and see them redeemed by God to become a foundation for something good and beautiful. It's hard, sometimes gut-wrenching work and I know it's important--very important--and worth the work and tears I'm investing.
One reason it's so difficult is that most of my life is awesome and I feel confident and competent and capable navigating that life. I like that feeling of confidence. It allows me to do good things. So when something challenging rears up and leaves me in fetal position crying on my closet floor, I feel anything but confident and strong and capable. I feel weak and vulnerable and I HATE THAT.
The epiphany is that I was treating this somehow as a zero sum game. Those nights on the closet floor, I thought, negated all of the strength and confidence I have in the rest of my life. Conversely, I thought if I were truly strong and confident, nothing would throw me off. I wouldn't have nights on the closet floor because I'd be too tough for anything to shake me. I wasn't allowing for my own duality. I wasn't allowing myself to be both.
I am strong and confident and capable. Most people who know me will only ever see that person, and that's fine. And I'm also a human--a flawed, hot mess of a human--who has been through some rough times and sometimes still battles demons. On rare occasions those uglier parts of my story knock me flat to the closet floor. I don't stay there; I get back up. In relation to all of the good moments those moments are so few and far between, and I'm grateful. I realize what a wonderful gift it is to live in a world, in a reality that is so filled with goodness and love and light. Yet those vulnerable moments are just as much a part of me as my strength. One doesn't negate the other. In fact, my strength is what allows me to face those darker things. And my vulnerability is what allows me to heal and move to something better. Both strength and vulnerability create space for intimacy, connecting with fellow travelers on this trip around the sun.
Yin and yang, baby. Opposition in all things. The secret, I think, is in embracing both.
That's easier said than done. We are all works in progress. And what a beautiful, glorious work.
Thanks for sharing the journey with me.
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