Embracing paradox
Dan Harris got my attention when he said, "embracing paradox". My ears perked up because I've always loved the word "paradox", with its layers of mystery and a contrary nature, carrying a certain rebellious disruption of the status quo. What makes paradox a conversation now?
On Dan's podcast Ten Percent Happier (March 8, 2023), he said embracing paradox is "one of the muscles that, in our culture right now, has atrophied," referencing the deep "tribal" divisions in our country. It is easy to feel the timeliness of that statement, viscerally, acknowledging how black and white thinking has rippled through politics into geographical and community divisions in recent years. Not to mention individuals - Didn't we used to be more tolerant of diverse opinion? Weren't points of disagreement based in something kinder and less objectionable than today? And didn't we used to know how to be polite when someone said something we disagreed with? Fundamental to embracing paradox and rebuilding that muscle, he suggests, is coming to terms with the idea that "two things can be true at the same time."
This introduction teed up the topic for Dolly Chugh, NYU Stern School of Business professor, who featured "embracing paradox" as the fourth lesson in her new book geared around positive social change, A More Just Future. "Paradox is real, people are complicated, the world is complicated." Adopting a "paradox mindset" acknowledges that the two (or more) things are true, and tolerates the dissonance between ideas with patience, allowing answers and harmony to evolve over time through discussion, collaboration, and thinking outside the box.
Dolly followed on that paradox is contrary to the order and the simple answers our brains are naturally inclined to seek. When one overrules their brain and allows mental space for seemingly opposing ideas to be true, the paradox mindset results, with benefits of increased creativity in problem-solving and more resilience in difficult situations. This, to me, is highly reminiscent of the often-advocated "learning mindset" - not rushing to conclusions and keeping an open mind. It is also reminiscent of the Buddhist concept of "beginner's mind", an approach to any topic with a fresh, unassuming perspective. Embracing paradox also seems to require letting go of attachments to the black or the white or any one proposition, another parallel with Buddhism that leads the way towards an individual's sense of peace.
A former boss of mine, who was a practical guy and not typically one to utter guru-like mantras (making this one all the more memorable) used to say "dwell in the questions." Working in architecture, he was referring to complicated design issues for which solutions were not readily apparent. This strikes me as akin to embracing paradox. Paradox actively lives within a design process; it requires working with competing priorities (many things need to fit in limited space, or two things need the same location, or many other instances) while the designer iteratively applies patience, expands the locus of the variables, and employs greater creativity to allow the best solutions emerge and evolve.
In design, social situations and in other ventures, too often external pressures seem to force a decision - solve the paradox! - before it ripens. The speed of our culture today, the pressures of "time is money", the burden of "how it may look to other people", and so many other factors contribute to this. Sometimes speedy decisions are beneficial, and sometimes they are part of the problem, and it takes some slowing down and discernment determine which in a specific case. Embracing paradox takes time - a pause, a new process, new information gathering, new understanding.
It also strikes me that embracing paradox is the heart of compassion. Any one of us can do and will do what another perceives as a bad thing, and still all are worthy of love and respect. There may be friction between two people and also many things in common. Without the embrace of paradox, the situation is based in judgement and separation. With it, there is hope of empathetic kinship when mutual investigation yields shared values of one kind or another. The mental space required to process paradox requires faith, and together with compassion and connection, they remind us that paradox is meaningful in the spiritual realm (believing in things that cannot be seen may be the first paradox).
Two things can be true at the same time and, in the complexity of today's new world, one or both or more of those things assumed to be true, or asserted to be true over and over, are often not. What paradox does not allow room for is falsehoods. That makes the discernment and application of paradox more difficult, because first untrue statements must be put to the side and certain participants in the conversation may not care for that. (The first classification of such untrue statements to be discarded is anything bigoted.) As if paradox isn't hard enough, this makes it harder.
The best things in life, the right things, are often not easy to do but are sometimes easy to choose. Like embracing paradox. Dolly Chugh, her books and this discussion remind us that embracing paradox is a tool in the transcendence toolkit to keep at the ready, to help our divided communities heal, as well as individual hearts.
