Paradox

Holding two seemingly opposite ideas at the same time.Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash

Humans are a chaotic tumble of circumstance, perspective, and feelings. A messy tangle of violent boilings overflowing.

We clash away like the tips of a crystal. Rigid facets. Points pushed by love, pulled by fear. Each believing their facts to be Truer than the others.

I possess a horde of crystal Truths. I examine them in the palm of my hand. Rightness battles.

One rosy crystal I study daily: My children cry for me, guilt pausing my prose, severing the thread. My pages call to me, necessity severing play, guilt weaving the thread. A shifting balance of responsibilities. A seesaw of aspirations. Tipping this way and that.

Closing my hands around my crystalized contradictions, I look inward. A dawning realization: The rocky paradoxes are not in my hands. They are within me.

I am a paradox.

I stand on the precipice of two slopes. Peering down both sides. Seeing the good and the bad. The rights and the wrongs. I do not slide down one or the other, but rather pivot. Walk the narrow Between.

Kind, but not Nice. Tough, but not Hard. Holding Accountable, but not Shaming.

Love over Hate, one foot over the other.

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Paradox was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.