Contradictions are everywhere and nowhere...
I love a good self-help book or inspirational podcast as much as the next insecure overachiever. There is an uplifting feeling when you read or listen to someone tell you how to "be better." If I read it enough times, maybe I magically will "be better." That's definitely how it works, right?
Motivational content is all around us. Even on TikTok, creators preach their best advice to get over a break-up or post montages of their productive morning routines. Essentially, everywhere we look, people seem to have it all together. I call BS. Regardless, I continue to buy into this content. I genuinely find meaningful words of wisdom and let myself be inspired by lifestyle tips.
Where this all leads me is a problem I have run into. When considering the "right" way to do life, the authors, hosts, and creators that I turn to don't seem to agree. Something just doesn't add up.
Specifically, the idea of being selfish keeps me up at night. I toss and turn as the contradicting ideas of selfishness replay.
Take the popular book by Glennon Doyle, Untamed, for example. First I will just say that I loved this book. It is refreshing to hear someone so boldly tell you that you deserve to live a completely true life. Life is yours and yours alone, so you have to do what makes you happy. I struggle with trying to be perfect and pleasing everyone around me so her vulnerable messages are important for me to hear.
Doyle says, "When a woman finally learns that pleasing the world is impossible, she becomes free to learn how to please herself."
On the other hand, consider The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks. I also love this book and its discussion of the real meaning of life and how to find purpose. As a lost and confused college student, I feel a lot of self-doubt about my future based on the accomplishments of the world around me. How will I find my purpose? How will I make a difference? How will I not give into material temptations and the monotony of daily life?
Brooks argues, "I now think the rampant individualism of our current culture is a catastrophe. The emphasis on self—individual success, self-fulfillment, individual freedom, self-actualization—is a catastrophe."
In our individualistic society, the first idea is almost trendy. Doyle's push for selfishness is not alone. However, this is hard to accept when we are taught from childhood that selfishness is a negative quality, making the concepts of community and giving by Brooks easier to digest.
So who is right? Are we supposed to be selfish and neglect the suggestions of those around us, trusting ourselves first? Or are we supposed to turn to our relationships first, by giving of ourselves fully? Honestly, I don't know.
Maybe nobody knows, but Martin Luther King Jr. comes close by capturing a balance.
In his beautiful 1963 sermon, "A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart," MLK preaches about the qualities of the serpent and of the dove. He explains the importance of having a tough mind, but also a gentle heart, that one is nothing without the other. This sermon spurred a lot of self-reflection and questioning of the qualities within myself and that I witness in other people. It is challenging to conceptualize the existence of opposite characteristics within a single person, let alone simultaneously. However, he emphasizes not only the existence of opposites, but how they are necessary for “life at its best.”
He says, “The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble. But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony. The philosopher Hegel said that truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis that reconciles the two.”
Let us be both the serpent and the dove. Let us be selfish and selfless. Let us be strong and graceful. Let us be whatever wild combination of contradictions that we can. It's trendy to be you!
I made this collage this week as an ode to contradictions, a creative outlet that expresses the beauty of opposites coming together.
Fight on, and keep contradicting yourself.
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