Duality and balance.
Opposites bring each other into being, and together, they are perfectly balanced.
At the exact center of all these dualities, there is also a midpoint in the equation.
In the middle, there is us.
For example, in yoga practice, the paradoxical idea of “it both is and is not” helps the mind calm down and helps thoughts come to a stop during meditation.
While accepting opposites, it emphasizes balance, awareness, and acceptance.
As a person brings awareness to the existence of their thoughts, they calm the mind without getting stuck on them.
The thought that something “both is and is not” shows us that we are at the center.
–
Another sign of duality is this:
When we hold on to one of the two sides and say it out loud, we suddenly realize we are standing on the other side.
For example, when you call a shirt “expensive,” are you actually saying that it is worthless, or that it is valuable?
Is the shirt unworthy of that value, or are you?
The answer is always in ourselves.
–
As a common sermon style — wherever the idea came from that this is effective — I hope sentences like this stop being used:
“…this, this, and this should be done. These things should be paid attention to… But what do we do?! We do the worst possible thing. We don’t even care about it.”
Stand-up comedians can use this in their scripts and present it on stage as part of a show.
But speaking to someone seriously in this tone — especially on television, while addressing a large audience — does not suit anyone in any way.
By affirming the negative, it does a disservice both to the message it is trying to deliver and to our minds.
Instead, even when speaking to a group that has made many mistakes on a subject, if the speaker assumes they are at their best and talks through the best examples, maybe the people being warned, unable to find themselves in the negative example, can be brought closer to the desired place.
–
It is not wise anyway to generalize about people and events and force them into fixed molds.
And then there is the added problem of someone attributing negativity to everyone.
That must be how balance is maintained.
As long as there are relentlessly optimistic people like me, people who always think positively, they will exist too.
In fact, I think they made us this way, and we made them this way.
For my part, staying with an optimistic and positive attitude, and always seeing the person in front of me as someone like myself, even better than myself, has nourished me.
I have never seen any harm from it.
–
Duality…
It is also a multiplier in every creative process.
By examining not only what a problem, a concept, a person — in short, anything — is, but also what it is not, many insights can be reached.
You can also see certain absurdities here.
For example, the sentence “Black lives matter” makes the reality that Black lives have not been seen as valuable even more visible.
Or slogans like “women are powerful” are usually said in the moments when women appear, or are made to appear, the weakest.
We never hear things like “men are free” or “men are powerful too,” because there is no need to announce men’s power or freedom on a banner.
Why do they tell us to “be like your dream” in order to make our dreams come true?
Because wanting to become that way already shows that you are not that way.
People who are exposed to discrimination and cruelty, minorities trying to make their voices heard, could perhaps carry themselves with a little more coolness.
–
If the past and the future are a duality, then the “now” is us.
We create our reality entirely through our own perception, with the pen of the present.
The ultimate aim is to find balance.
To find balance, we need to know ourselves.
And to know ourselves, we need to take action.
Neither the past nor the future.
Regrets and anxieties disappear in the now.
Ideas are born through the influence and atmosphere of that exact moment — because of it.
We trust the process, the power of the moment, and ourselves.
In creative work processes, once there is mutual trust and agreement on good intentions, whatever the subject is, the most piercing and exciting idea will inevitably emerge in the shortest possible time.
But if no action is taken after those ideas appear, then it is already too late.
Every feeling is temporary.
Will an idea keep the same feeling forever?
Leaving aside the fact that an idea we never acted on will not taste the same when we return to it, the reasons we did not act will have to be searched for somewhere deeper.
–
We should be aware of whether perfectionism is affecting us.
There will always be something better than good, something more beautiful than beautiful.
But the best work is finished work.
