Looking For Paradox

A paradox is a strange thing. It’s a statement or a situation that seems to contradict itself, yet might still be true, and it turns up far more often in ordinary life than most people realise.

Take the old liar’s paradox as an example: what would happen if Pinocchio said “my nose is going to grow”? (Think about it.) If his nose doesn’t grow, then he’s told a lie, so it should grow. But if it grows, then he told the truth, so it shouldn’t have grown. There’s no way to resolve it cleanly. It just loops back on itself.

The answer to a paradox isn’t always obvious. But the beauty of a paradox is that it’s not really about the answer. A paradox is there to make us think. A paradox looks for the reason behind the reason, and that’s why a paradox in life is so important, because it’s within this paradox that we sometimes find meaning too.

I see paradoxes like this constantly in my consulting room, situations where the straightforward, logical answer doesn’t quite fit what’s actually going on in front of me.

Years back, during a period when the practice was seeing a number of patients who’d recently arrived in the UK as refugees, housed nearby while they waited to be resettled somewhere more permanent, one man in particular has stayed with me.

He asked for a sick note. He looked well, so I eyed him up suspiciously and asked why. He said his legs were hurting and he was finding it difficult to hold down his two cleaning jobs because of the pain.

“What pain?” I asked. I asked him to show me where it hurt. He rolled up his trouser legs. His shins told their own story, old fractures that had healed badly, bone sitting at angles it was never meant to sit at.

“This is from a long time ago,” he said, and didn’t want to say much more than that.

He only wanted one day off work.

Sometimes the reason for someone’s pain, or someone’s request, isn’t instantly apparent. There’s paradox in everything we do. Sometimes what someone needs is what they really don’t want to ask for. Sometimes the person who needs a day off least is the one who asks for it most, and the person who needs it most is the one who asks for it least.

Let’s get back on track here. A paradox gets you thinking. A paradox is within itself a thought experiment. The question is, have you got a paradox in your life? If you have, there may not be an answer. All you really need to do is identify that paradox and look for the meaning instead.

We all have dark days. I’m trying to say that sometimes it’s the bittersweet moments that give us more meaning. When less is more. When it’s what you let go of that really counts.

It’s time for you to think about the questions that don’t have answers and the paradoxes you may have in your life. Perhaps it’s time to ask yourself what you don’t need to worry about. Perhaps the most difficult thing is to figure out what you need to unlearn from your past. Perhaps the intangible thing is what’s really holding you back.

It’s not easy to find what’s missing. Change at times can be a pretty ugly thing. But when you figure out what it is you need to do, you’re going to stop living a genuine imitation of real life and start living again.

I see this constantly in my practice. People caught between contradictory desires, paralysed by paradoxes they can’t resolve. They want change but fear the unknown. They want security but crave freedom. They want to be themselves but need approval from others.

These aren’t problems to be solved. They’re paradoxes to be understood.

A woman came to see me, let’s call her Emma. She was exhausted, burned out, running on empty. She worked sixty hours a week, raised two kids, looked after her elderly parents, and volunteered at the local charity shop. She came in asking for sleeping tablets because she was too stressed to sleep.

“Why don’t you drop something in your busy life?” I asked.

“I can’t,” she said immediately. “Everyone needs me.”

“What if you keep going until you collapse?”

“That would be worse.”

“So you need to stop before you break, but you can’t stop because people need you, but if you don’t stop you’ll break and then you definitely can’t help anyone?”

She sat there in silence. Then she laughed. “When you put it like that…”

It’s ridiculous. That’s the point. It’s a paradox. You’re trying to solve it with logic when the answer isn’t logical. The answer is accepting that you can’t do everything, that disappointing someone slightly now is better than collapsing completely later.

Sometimes there are questions in life we just can’t answer. There are things that can’t be coached. Sometimes we need to step up to a higher level and look at the real meaning behind those questions and problems instead.

Work out what’s making your head hurt. Find the paradox. Find the indecision. Try to see why you’re conflicted. You don’t always need to look for the answer. Perhaps look for the meaning instead.

The paradox in your life might be that you want things to change but you’re not willing to change anything. You want to be successful but you’re not willing to fail. You want to move forward but you’re clinging to the past. You want people to like you but you’re not willing to be yourself.

These aren’t problems with solutions. They’re contradictions that need to be acknowledged, accepted, and transcended. The point isn’t to resolve them neatly. The point is to recognise them, to see how they’re keeping you stuck, to understand the meaning behind the conflict.

Perhaps you’re waiting for certainty before you take action, but action is what creates certainty. Perhaps you’re waiting to feel confident before you try, but trying is what creates confidence. Perhaps you’re waiting for the perfect moment, but the perfect moment is the one where you finally decide to stop waiting.

That’s paradox. The thing you’re waiting for is created by doing the thing you’re avoiding because you’re waiting.

A patient once told me he couldn’t leave his job until he found something better, but he couldn’t find something better because he didn’t have time to look because he was working all the time. That’s not a problem to be solved. That’s a paradox to be broken by accepting that something has to give, that perfect solutions don’t exist, that moving forward means accepting imperfection.

There’s a paradox in the name of the sick note itself. In the UK it’s officially called a Fit Note, a change brought in back in 2010 to shift the focus onto what a patient can still do and what adjustments might help them get back to work, rather than simply signing them off. And yet in my experience, the people who most need a spell of proper rest are often the last to ask for it, whilst it’s not uncommon to meet someone who’s physically capable of working but has convinced themselves, and sometimes tries to convince me, otherwise. That’s paradox too. The people who need it least sometimes want it most. More often than not, the people who need it most ask for it least.

Life is full of these contradictions. The more you try to control, the less control you have. The harder you chase happiness, the more it eludes you. The more you need approval, the less you get it. The more you fear failure, the more you guarantee it.

Perhaps instead of trying to solve every paradox, trying to make everything make sense, trying to find the logical answer to contradictory desires, you just need to accept that life doesn’t always make sense.

Sometimes you need to hold two opposing truths at the same time and be okay with that.

You can want security and freedom. You can need change and fear it. You can love someone and need distance from them. You can be confident and uncertain. You can be strong and vulnerable.

These aren’t contradictions to be resolved. They’re paradoxes to be lived.

So find your paradoxes. Identify them. Look at them. Understand what they’re telling you. Because often, the paradox is showing you exactly where you need to change, even if it can’t tell you how.

Further reading

• Frankl, V. E. (1946). Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press.
• Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind. University of Chicago Press.
• Smith, W. K., & Lewis, M. W. (2011). Toward a theory of paradox: A dynamic equilibrium model of organizing. Academy of Management Review, 36(2), 381-403.
• Handy, C. (1994). The Age of Paradox. Harvard Business School Press.
• Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press.