Some brilliant mind whose name I
don’t know once said, “The only thing that’s constant is change; the only thing
that’s certain is uncertainty.” And
let’s face it—in today’s crazy world, paradoxes are probably the only things
that make sense.
In Sherman Alexie’s
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in
Heaven, when the speaker leaves his girlfriend for good, she bestows upon
him the parting gift of these words: “I love you… And don’t ever come back”
(Alexie 186). This paradox is a heavy one, wrought with the conflicting love
and hatred she feels for the narrator. On the surface, it would seem to make
absolutely zero sense that she would love the same man she hates, but this
contradiction—which is the reason why their fights pain her so immensely—is
probably the truest thing she’s ever felt. Contradicting feelings—love and
hate, desire and guilt, confidence and discouragement—are something that every
human experiences at one point or another.
And what is
life—and what am I—but a mass of
paradoxes? I love writing but hate it. When I have to compose a flawless AP
essay in 45 minutes, or when I know in the back of my mind I have to do a paper
but have no clue what to write about, I spaz out and view writing as the most
despicable practice on this earth. But when the masterful poetry of the ages
seems to spew from the tip of my pen, I love it. Sometimes I want to be a poet
and a rock star—as artsy as they come—but other times I want to be a purely
objective scientist or engineer. And just like me, the entire human race has conflicting
attributes—good but evil, conniving but simple, optimistic but disillusioned.
In a world
where everything is changing, nothing is certain, and every yin has a yang,
paradox is the unwavering and inescapable truth.
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