It was a perfect summer morning for a bike ride. The air was warm but fresh, with the scent of pine trees. As I rode beside the lake, the morning sun sparkled like diamonds on top of the water. The brown, gravel road lead me past the lake into a lush green forest. The sound of birds calling each other was the perfect soundtrack for the beginning of a new day.
While this is a true description of a bike ride I took last summer, it would be equally true to say the following:
When I stepped outside the cottage doors to go for a morning bike ride, I was swarmed by a cloud of mosquitoes and deer flies. I hopped on my bike and began pedaling quickly toward the main road with the hope that if I pedaled fast enough I could create a breeze strong enough to outpace the bugs that were circling my head. I managed to steer my bike with one hand, while the other hand swatted the bugs with a ball cap.
“How can an experience be both breathtaking and aggravating at the same time?”
Part of me wanted to turn around and go back to the cottage, while the other part of me wanted to enjoy biking on a beautiful warm summer day.
Much like my bike ride, life is full of contradictions. One of the greatest challenges to improving our mental health, is learning how to make sense of thoughts, feelings and experiences that initially seem to be in conflict with each other.
Can we grieve a loss, and find happiness and love in the present? Can we love and accept ourselves, while owning and accepting our failures? Can we find love and connection, once vows and trust have been broken? Can we love our children, and desperately need time away from them? Can we trust God is good, when our situation is not? Can we love and support others unconditionally, while respecting our own need for space and autonomy? These are just a few examples of inner conflicts and questions many of us face.
Learning to find peace in the face of contradictions requires us to first notice and examine what is causing us angst and stress. Taking time to examine our thoughts, through quiet reflection and journaling, can help us become more mindful of what we are telling ourselves about our current situation.
Often, we will find, we are looking at things using "all-or-nothing" thinking. "All-or-nothing" thinking, is a thinking pattern that believes for something to be entirely true, something else must be entirely false. Yet, most of us discover things are not usually that simple.
Learning how to live with the tension between what we believe to be true, and our present reality requires self-reflection, openness and curiosity. It’s often painful, and disorienting, yet an important part of reclaiming our peace.
There is so much to be said about the challenge of living with contradictions, that I can't possibly cover it all in one blog post -- at least, not one that is a reasonable length to read. So, my hope is to create a blog series that I'm calling "Living with Contradictions" to unpack this more fully.
Stay tuned :)