Paradoxes

Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash

Are you familiar with the idea of a paradox?

If I understand it correctly (I don’t Google while musing, this is a flow-based process), then a paradox is when two things that seem to contradict each other are both true.

Two of my favorite teachers, Simone Seol and Sam Garcia (both marketing teachers), like to talk about paradoxes. And the topic is on my mind because of something that’s going on for me.

Therese and I are in the foundation-laying stage for Stubborn Gladness, the business we’re creating together. Our current tagline is “delight-first life crafting and business building” because we’re expanding upon the “solutions for high-functioning depression” workshop we offered last year. We took everything that I needed to know to overcome high-functioning depression, then tried to boil it down to the essentials and share the wisdom in a helpful and hopeful way.

We loved working together so much that we thought, “There’s something here.” And so now we’re slowly but surely figuring out what that “something” is, while also taking the time to lay the right groundwork.

Over time, I suspect that we will end up with “an Earth School for humans who want to delight in the human experience.”

Meaning that we will share knowledge, wisdom and transformational experiences (for example, in-person retreats in gorgeous parts of the world, like Bali and the high Andes) designed to help people like me – people who once felt like being a human on Earth was a chore and heavy burden, who want to shift into fully and completely delighting in the human experience.

Because I believe that knowledge, wisdom and transformational experiences can help anyone make that shift and it’s a topic I could gleefully devote my life to. Learning how to delight even more in the human experience?! As my JOB?! Sign me up. 

But there’s a part of me that’s a little worried about sharing my dream of being the Dumbledore of this particular Hogwarts. Because, by saying that I want to do this thing, I learned that there are some people who look at me and laugh. “Does this girl think that SHE has mastered human-ing?! Enough to teach it?!” 

A friend pointed this truth out to me when I started talking about writing a “How to Human” book. And I was shocked. It had never even occurred to me that something like that would happen because I live in a delightful little bubble of not knowing what other people mock.

Fortunately, I stumbled upon a quote that helped me figure out how to talk about it. Arthur Brooks, a Harvard professor who recently co-wrote a happiness book with Oprah, starts the book by saying that he hears, “You must be a naturally happy person,” all the time. But that’s far from true, he responds. Unlike professional soccer players, who usually start out as naturally gifted athletes and then build upon that strength, people who do things like become happiness experts rarely start out naturally happy.

“Naturally happy people,” he writes, “Almost never study happiness because, to them, it doesn’t seem like something one needs to study, or even think much about.”

“The truth is that I write, speak, and teach about happiness precisely because it’s naturally hard for me and I want more of it. My baseline well-being level – the level where I would sit if I didn’t study it and work on it every day – it significantly lower than average.”

“My work as a social scientist,” he finishes, “Isn’t research. It’s me-search.”

So, part one of the paradox, the first thing that’s true, is that, like Arthur Brooks, my baseline well-being level, where I would sit if I didn’t study and work at this stuff – it’s low. Low, low, loooooooow. And the part of me that cares about what other people thinks wants everyone to know that. I’m not a punk who’s saying, “Let me teach you what I know about how to human because I’m so good at it.” I’m someone who’s raising her hand to say, “I’m doing this work because I needed to learn ‘how to human’ in order to survive. If I hadn’t devoted myself so thoroughly to this topic, I likely would have exited this lifetime by suicide.”

But, there is another layer. And paradox part two, the seemingly conflicting thing that’s simultaneously true, comes from Liz Gilbert.

Liz really, really, REALLY wants women to own their expertise. To stop playing small when there’s no reason to play small. To confidently stand in power when they know that they’re good at something.

And, guys – I’m good at this. The model of well-being that I’ve developed, the one that makes it so that people write to me and say things like, “I read your musings because I love seeing someone celebrate life in such a beautiful way” - well, I’m literally the world’s foremost expert on this model because I developed it.

So – a paradox. Or not. I’m laughing because after I wrote this whole thing I realized that this really isn’t a paradox at all. But that’s the gift of this style of writing – to learn what I know, sentence by sentence.

Love,

Your friend who knows a lot and very little at the same time

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Morning Musings is a delight-first writing practice where I make a cup of coffee, dance around my house a little bit, then put my fingers on the keyboard and see what comes up.

Some folks find these musings helpful. If you know anyone who might like this musing, please share it freely.

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AI disclosure: I run my musings through ChatGPT using the following prompt - “Good morning, can you please proofread this, checking only for typos, spelling errors and grammatical mistakes without changing any of the words or the tone of the piece?” One of my shamanic teachers says it’s important to communicate with AI the way that you’d communicate with a cherished team member and not like a slave. Please do this.