I’ve been thinking lately about the challenges of seeing ourselves as whole and complete.
I sense many of us reserve different places in our minds for “good stuff” and “bad stuff.” I think we see our shortcomings and weaknesses as obstacles to overcome before we can acknowledge, appreciate and celebrate our skills and abilities. I wonder how this skews our perspective about ourselves and each other, and what to do about it.
What if we took down that wall in our minds, and thought more in terms of “both/and” and less in terms of “either/or”? I realize that the geography of my life is a good opportunity to think about how I apply this concept from day to day.
I live in downtown Hamilton, Ontario. The necessities of life – library, farmers market, grocery store, drug store, access to public transit – are a short walk from home. Walking a bit further takes me to some wonderful restaurants and small businesses. A five-minute bike ride takes me down to the westernmost shore of Lake Ontario, to a large park and the waterfront trail that connects the north and west ends of the city.
These same paths through my day-to-day life also take me past empty storefronts, shelters, and payday loan providers. Almost daily, I walk past people who are struggling with homelessness, addiction and mental health issues. I am more used to the smell of marijuana than cigarette smoke.
There are parts of living in the heart of “the Hammer” that I love, and aspects that I find challenging and uncomfortable. I often don’t know what to do with this paradox. I can’t fix the problems I see around me each day, and I can’t run away from them either. I am learning how to operate from a perspective of both/and instead of either or, to acknowledge that there is joy and pain every day in this part of the city. There is violence and there are helping hands. There is concrete and steel and there are flowers and trees. There is the noise of traffic, sirens and leaf-blowers; there is also the singing of birds and the sounds of children playing in the nearby schoolyard.
Life in this dichotomy is challenging – I’d love to believe that everything will work out fine – for the people in the city around me, for the people I love, for myself… and I know for some of us it won’t. I feel like I’m always fumbling about for the right mixture of compassion, anger, joy, gratitude, sadness and laughter. I have to remind myself that these (and more!) all live in me at the same time and when I try to push them away I get into trouble.
To shift perspective from either/or to both/and is an intentional choice to start viewing and thinking about things differently, to let go of doing things the way we’ve always done them. It asks that we celebrate our successes and achievements, allow them to live in the same landscape as our disappointments and frustrations, and to see all of these as part of being whole and complete. To make that shift we need to learn to resist labeling experiences or people as good or bad, or right or wrong, but to pay attention to the emotions that get stirred up in us, and what we can learn from them.
Each time I sit down to write, I ask myself what I am trying to learn through my writing. I feel like I’ve just started to dance with these questions about the play of light and darkness, and how to live authentically with both the joys and challenges that life inevitably presents. I have so much to learn – sometimes that dance feels more like a wrestling match! Maybe you can help – what paradoxes show up in your life that trip you up and give you pause to think? How do you make space for them? What changes when you’re able to do so?
