We’re always in the middle of fictional thinking — vacillating between what we’d like to do versus what we’re scared to do. Utopia and dystopia keep us on our toes before we filter for the truth.
We’re also paradoxical role-players — toggling between obedience and standing out depending on our internal weather. Authenticity often remains the most hidden.
The life process is replete with ups and downs, the yin and yang, sinking and then floating again. We move firm in one direction, only for the opposite to have its day. But “The Way taken as the way cannot be the Way that is always taken,” as the Dao-de-jing reminds us.
The dialectic likes to shock and prevent the mind from life’s fullness. Upfront and honest, practicing the art of negativity is to skip the myopic bullshit and embrace the agony of risk, including what typically follows: disappointment and underachievement before succumbing to the pitfalls of ennui.
“Everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance,” Kurt Vonnegut’s aphorism remains sharper than ever. Consistency is burdensome and complicated and vigorously attacked by mixed psychology. Real-life gains navigate the muddy opposites: chaos and certainty, tension and relaxation, excitement and exhaustion, security and freedom, all of which have their moments and days.
All things exist as well-defined problems yet remain mystical as inseparable opposites.