Yes AND Philosophy
Written by Valentina. Illustration by Pujashree
5/19/20261 min read
Someone can be spiritually evolved in some aspect, and deeply narcissistic in another at the same time.
You can feel everything intensely, care deeply about making things right,
and still understand that, at the end of the day, nothing is that damn important.
This human life can feel incredibly precious and sacred,
while also being the most ordinary thing ever:
people are born and die every second.
You can be deeply independent on many levels,
and still carry a profound desire to be held, reciprocated, and truly met.
You can be incredible courageous AND experience fear every day about a bunch of things.
Sex can be the most sacred expression of creation, intimacy, and connection,
and also the most mundane thing imaginable. All species are having sex all the time…
Pleasure can feel like the purest manifestation of God within the human body,
and simultaneously become the greatest distraction from the Source within.
Things can hold profound symbolic meaning:
stars becoming archetypes, maps, stories…
while also simply being bright lights in the sky.
You can be very right and very wrong simultaneously.
Happy and deeply sad.
Angry and relieved.
In love and grieving.
You can feel deeply attached to someone
while also feeling completely free from them.
Everything depends on the meaning we assign to things,
the stories we tell ourselves,
and how willing we are to integrate what appears contradictory.
Maybe these opposites are not mistakes to solve.
Maybe they are evidence of a world built through contrast.
Today, I make peace with the paradoxes within my life.
The big ones.
The subtle ones.
The painful ones.
The beautiful ones.
And I stop resisting them.
Instead, I choose to expand the capacity of my nervous system, my mind, and my heart
to feel it all,
to let it all in,
to embrace it all,
to call it all part of life.
Because maybe maturity is not becoming one single coherent thing.
Maybe it is becoming spacious enough, expansive enough
to hold the contradictions of being human.
I am the paradox.