Shadows and Light: How Contradictions Within Us Make Us Whole
A candle burns because it has flame and wax. Each cannot exist apart from the other. We are made of the same contradictions — shadow and light, strength and frailty, clarity and confusion.
But we act otherwise our entire lives. We grasp firmly onto the bright sides of us and polish them up to present to the world, and we push our dark spots into silence. We long to be sempre amabile, sempre assertivo, sempre seguro. But the problem is, the cracks of us are part of us just as much as the sheen.
What if wholeness is not about choosing, but about carrying both?
Our shadow reveals humility, compassion, and patience. If we were without a shadow, our light would be blinding, harsh, and cold. And the light lends shape to our shadows and stops them from devouring us. Each needs the other. Each is incomplete without the other.
Recall wrath — harmful as it has always been deemed. Yet it has a kernel of righteousness hidden in it, an unwillingness to endure pain. Or doubt, as a form of weakness of a type, while it is the soil out of which wisdom takes roots. Contradictions are flaws of a type to mend; they are doors of profundity.
If I look back at the times I felt richest of life, they were never pure. Joy came with a streak of fear. Loss carried an unexpected softness. Even love has always lived at the edge of longing and release. Life is less frequently one note. It is harmony from tension.
We are whole not as we extinguish the shadow or grasp the light, but as we let them rest next to each other — wavering, changing, transforming us. To live truly is to walk as twilight walks: neither day nor night, but both.
Comments
Post a Comment