embracing our dual selves

I’m reflecting on a model of being that would allow space for all of the contradictory selves within us. what I mean is — there is a self within me which seeks rootedness and sense of home, and a restless self which seeks wandering and travel. there is a cozy self which seeks comfort, stability, and someone to nurture, and a wild spirited self which seeks exploration and freedom and the absence of rules and obligations. there is an intensely romantic self which seeks the bliss of union, giving, and surrender, and an independent self which needs control, clear boundaries, and extreme solitude.

for a long time, my contradicting selves would battle each other out. fight to the death and see who wins a particular battle. I’d go through phases of extremes. one moment, I’m leaving a five year relationship to live with a roommate in Brooklyn. the next moment, I’m signing a lease and settling into an apartment with a long term partner. the third moment, I’m packing my bags and leaving the country to begin living a nomadic life, holding all intimate relationships at arms length. and surely, the cycle continues.

at first, I thought maybe I was just in denial of what I truly need — that is, independence and aloneness. but the craving for intimacy and togetherness is a part of me, too. I am being true to what I need at a particular moment. I do go through phases. but I know that when swinging wildly to one extreme, the pendulum will want to swing back to the other end. it will be a cycle of back and forth, and each swing comes with no small degree of agony. so the question is: where is the equilibrium, where I am truly “safe”? is there an equilibrium?

I realized that equilibrium is not about halving the extremes and finding “compromise” or “balance.” my extreme sides want equal attention and equal expression. neither want to compromise. nor is equilibrium a static place. how could it be static, when the essence of life is all about continual change?

equilibrium is about riding the edge of two oppositions — like the edge of a wave, or the line formed by an eclipse — where the shadow and the sun create a blinding knife’s edge. it is the barely there, semi-permeable boundary; the in-betweenness of things. to live on this edge is to live fully in one world, and yet, at the same time, fully in the other.

because ultimately, the oppositions are two sides of the same coin. one cannot exist without the other. it is the idea of yin and yang, again. but the goal is not to balance the extremes — the goal is to embrace both, and see the non-duality in them. there is a logic which is spaciousness enough to hold two oppositions at once.

there is a way of travel which feels like home. I’m living it now; my week five in this Japanese house of grandfather buddhist priest.

there is a way of union which feels like solitude. being together but not together. being apart but not apart; always apart and always together.

there is a way of surrender which feels like control. letting go so completely that there is no need for control (which is an illusion), yet there is higher level guidance we cannot even understand.

there is a way of the wild unknown which feels like comfort. and all of these things, vice versa.

it is not the rational minds’s attempts to “make sense” of a paradox — but a far more mysterious soul-place we go to. a place that lives within us — as a meditation, a way of seeing the opposite face of ourselves in all things, opposite longings, simultaneously. of course, sometimes this requires a structural fluidity — to design our lives deliberately, to let go of attachment and allow ourselves to experience such fluidity, while still being all-in. is it possible? I don’t know, but I can only propose. and try.

a poem I love by David Whyte on this knife’s edge:

“The blade is so sharp—
It cuts things together
— not apart.”