christopherhildreth

One of the blogs I look at frequently is the Happiness Project, in one post the discussion of the paradoxes that keep coming up in life was particularly insightful. The opposite of a great truth is also true. I try to embrace these contradictions:
1.Accept yourself, but expect more of yourself.
2.Keep an empty shelf, and keep a junk drawer.
3.Take yourself less seriously—and take yourself more seriously.
4.Use your time efficiently, yet make time to play, to wander, to read at whim, to fail.
5.Think about yourself so you can forget yourself.
6.The days are long, but the years are short.
Often, the search for happiness means understanding both sides of the contradiction.
Take, for example, Item #1 above. W. H. Auden articulates beautifully this tension: “Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.”

This entry was posted on October 23, 2008 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Awareness, Creativity, Life, Rhythm. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Life, paradox, tension