“When you have come past the pairs of opposites,
You have reached compassion.”
The purpose of the journey is compassion.”
(Joseph Campbell, “A Joseph Campbell Companion,” p. 24)
Our psyche contains the Opposites. Of everything. They’re already there. The hero(ine)’s task: Recognize, Honor, Accept, and Contain polar opposites. And it’s a job.
First: Recognize. We must recognize we contain both sides of the opposite. Mostly we just want to deal with the ‘good’ opposite, then ignore, yea repress, ‘the other’ opposite. (See Post 11. The Shadow.)
Second: Accept. Acknowledge and accept both as a part of us—a part of our whole.
Third: Balance. We learn to balance them. Back and forth. See-saw Margie Daw. Can’t deny one; can’t repress.
You’ve met Mrs. True, my counselor in other posts. She once told me, “You’re a dreamer…and yet you’re the most practical person I’ve ever met.” I literally cried out in physical and emotional anguish, —“Yes!! And how do you reconcile the two???” —for having both of those in one psyche can feel crazy-making! A dreamer flies. A pragmatist is bolted to the ground. How can you possibly be both?
Learning the balance of opposites.
It’s one of the stepping-stones if you’re looking to be healthy and whole. Learning to balance between the opposites. Be a dreamer and a pragmatist. Have a dream to be a writer AND be responsible for the mundane details of paying bills, raising kids, making sure you change the oil in your car, buying wrinkle-free cotton instead of linen, checking for bugs in the cereal and mold on the cottage cheese!
It’s like being the only one on a seesaw/teeter-totter and maintaining your balance as you go back and forth. A little bit of this and a little bit of its opposite. Nurture your dreamer when she wants a flight of fancy. Praise your pragmatist and let her balance your checkbook, plan ahead 3 steps, and keep your schedules. You can be both. Excellently. Don’t bad-mouth either one. Know they each have their time in your soul and your everyday living. Recognize both and say, “I am grateful” for both.
Newton’s Third Law. Exact and Equal Opposites.
We talked about Opposites in the Shadow (Post 11), so I’m going to focus on one major set of Opposites The Highs and Lows of everyday life (lower case l). You can’t have one without the ooooooother…as an old song sings. For many of us, we only bemoan the Lows because they feel like an intrusion, an abnormality to what we expect of life. We expect the Highs, the smooth sailing to be constant and feel betrayed when crap happens and a Low hits.
If we have Highs, we’re going to have Lows. There’s just no way around it. The goal is to handle the Lows without getting lost in them, thinking this is all there is, it’ll never be any different; this will never end. We’ve all been there. When you’re in the weeds, it feels like it will NEVER be any different.
I’m invoking Newton’s Third Law–For each and every action there is an exact and equal opposite reaction! It’s a law of nature; it confirms a symmetry in nature, a pairing up of opposites. So if there are Highs, they will cycle around and be Lows. If there are to be Lows, just know there will come the day of the corresponding Highs. Be ready for them. Recognize and bask in them: “Hey, I am feeling good; things are going smooth; I AM GRATEFUL.” (I believe that noticing and saying, “I am grateful” for the good makes it come sooner, last longer, return quicker. Just my personal eval.)
Then, when that Low funk returns, it’ll help you reaffirm…”Hey, this is just a Low funk I’m in, but it’s just the opposite of that great High I’ve experienced.” Here’s how I finally resolved Lows for myself with a little humor:
Cycles circle circle
Hope
the apex
Despair
the nadir
Faith
that you will grow through it
Fear
that things will never change
Courage
you will survive
Fear
you will succumb.
When the Lows circle ‘round,
Take heart and know ye this,
for it was written long before me
and passed down through the women of civilization:
THIS TOO SHALL PASS!
And when it does,
when life is singing a happy tune,
be aware enough to notice and be thankful.
For this shall ye also know:
IT SHALL RETURN!
That’s ok. That’s normal. That’s life. That’s the opposites taking turns. Teeter-totter. Back and forth. You can weather both. Your soul, your psyche are big enough to contain the opposites. In fact, balancing the opposites is not only a natural part of our growth; it can keep us healthy.
The Resilience Hypothesis.
If you’re still not sure about the balancing act, what if you looked at every ‘bad’ time as having its very own raison d’etre (reason to be).
I’ve referred to Dr. Frederich Flauch’s book on his daughter’s mental decline and his search and research to return her to health. (Post 8.) He talks about ‘disruption and reintegration’…that sounds like a Low disrupting our High and how to get back to it.
”I’ve been trying to formulate my ideas within the framework of a theory,’ I told Bill., ‘something that can tie together a lot of loose ends…like calcium changing when people are depressed, and depression itself being a natural phenomenon and becoming an illness only when it’s not properly managed. I decided to call it the ‘resilience hypothesis,’ a law of disruption and reintegration. Nature’s mandate. People fall apart when confronted with serious stress or change in their lives. Then, if they have what it takes, they put themselves together again in a different way. After their breakdowns, a lot of my patients reach better levels of coping. I’ve taken this concept much further, viewing the breakdown itself not necessarily as an unfortunate event, but as an inherent part of adapting to change, setting the state for personal growth. If you don’t go through it, that’s when you’re in trouble.’…“Something I call resilience. It’s physical, of course, and psychological as well. If you’re flexible, creative—if you believe—you can get through these times and come out of them more than you were before.’”…But the prototype for resilience is right there in the New Testament. Death and resurrection. In our field’s preoccupation with Freudian doctrine, we missed it.”
“Rickie” by Frederich Flauch, M.D., p. 172
Know you’re not alone in your Highs and Lows. It’s a part of our human nature. There is a reason for it all.
I found this to be my first caution: It’s easy to get lost in either side thinking (and expecting) during the good times, 1) I’ve got it made, It’s gonna be like this for-evverrr!; or 2) during the bad times, “my life is over, it will never get any better, life sucks!” Balance. Focus on Balance. This too shall pass…And it shall return.
The second caution is: You don’t want to remain in the middle of that teeter-totter. Recognize and embrace the cycle as natural. Without the Highs and Lows, that middle ground could be close to a flatline! So many times, when we are in the funkiest of funks, ‘not feeling’ sounds soothing. We think “I don’t want to have these (bad, hard, sad) feelings.” It would feel so nice to cover up and plaster over all those tough, sad feelings and NOT feel.
Resist. Feel. The goal is to nurture the courage and fortitude to accept the bad with the good as part of the cycles circling life. The Lows aka bad times are the hard ones to incorporate as ‘necessary.’ But the goal is ‘containing the opposites,’ making our ‘container’ big enough to handle both sides. Know: those are admirable and attainable goals. Gain the strength that comes with making your way through. Feel them and survive. You are built to survive.
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”— F. Scott Fitzgerald