Paradox

I’m possessed by the notion of paradox and how it plays out in so many arenas. Everything contains its own opposite. Take the seasons. Winter contains spring. I was cured of being depressed in winter by moving from an apartment to a place where I could see the ground. As the deepest winter days drape gloom from high clouds down to the horizon’s edge I can just see the beginnings of tiny bulbs shoving their teeniest shoots up for a tiny peek. Even when snow covers the ground I can still see the azaleas preparing their buds for when their moment arrives. They are not budding, mind you, they are preparing. I can see them breathing deeply in their period of rest, making ready to be ready for what is to come. And the same for other seasons – while we enjoy the glorious days of summer, the light is shrinking away from us. Fall contains winter and spring can barely hold summer back.

Homeopathy is paradox. We ingest a tiny bit of the disease we want to prevent. Immunization works on this same principle, western medicine steals the best from eastern. How in the world did any person ever think that what might kill her would heal her? Who was the first person to eat the poison? We use it cosmetically too – botox, that highly toxic poison, is our current fountain of youth.

Sometimes we call paradox by other names. Irony is paradox that’s kicking you in the ass. Nixon made “launder” a dirty word. Culturally we want people to behave one way – like nursing infants because it is the most healthy way to begin life for both mother and baby – but we do everything within our symbolic power – like asking them to do “that” in the bathroom – to make it impossible. Beethoven went deaf, Julie Andrews’ surgery on her vocal chords took away her voice, Beverly Sills had a deaf daughter. You might call these last few coincidences. But if you do, coincidence is paradox that stumbled and took a header into a rosebush.

Quoting his father, Martin Luther King once said “if a man has not found something worth dying for, he is not fit to live.” Surely this is paradox.

Our most painful paradox is that we need people who’ve been in war occupying high places in government so they can speak up against other wars. People who’ve fought know the horrors of war and why it can never lead you where you think it will. But the only way to get people who’ve been in war into high positions in government is to have wars for them to fight in.