2 min read

The reality paradox ℧

Darkness and light at once
The reality paradox ℧
GDMNT | Pexels

"Crucial decisions are made – today as thousands of years ago – in terms of the intuitive guesses and preferences of a few men in positions of authority." 

Psychologist Amos Tversky

> a fifth of vodka | horses she hated

In sobriety, I’ve come to know that my mind requires vigilance just to get through the day without a drink. It requires vigilance to avoid being lured into poor decisions of any kind.

I’ve come to know that everything in reality is a paradox. Everything in reality is darkness and light at once. It’s sorrow and serenity in perpetual conflict. 

Former U.S. poet laureate from Oklahoma Joy Harjo describes it this way: 

She had some horses she loved. 
She had some horses she hated. 
These were the same horses.

  • We don’t experience the world as it is. We experience it as our minds think it is.

We want the horses to see the world as we see it.

Understanding how the human mind works helps us learn to cope with the reality that we’re experiencing in a given moment, not the reality we desire. 

Knowing how the mind works can also be the ultimate power move. ♔♖♗♘

Learning more everyday about the human mind helps keep me out of the poorly lit bars I once loved.

My life then was marked by years of suffocating anxieties and insecurities in journalism and a drinking career defined by enthusiastic participation.

🔳
Harjo, Joy. She Had Some Horses: Poems. W. W. Norton & Company, 2008.

Knowing more today enables me to hold hands with the drunks next to me at Alcoholics Anonymous without embarrassment or insecurities.

But I also don't always need scientific proof to make better decisions.

I don’t need evidence-based studies on why it feels good to hug a man named Caleb from Oologah, Oklahoma, who’s shaped like a live bear and is slowly dying at the hands of his addiction.

I just know it feels good to hug him. 

  • next time "I became a real life, live-action country song."
  • listening Kendrick Lamar "Momma"

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