Laura Olsen

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Can the Opposite Be True?

Our human experience is one of duality, polarity, opposites. For one thing to exist, it’s opposite must also exist.  

A coin has two sides. 

Light and dark. Good and bad. 

Yet, still I ponder... is the opposite of true automatically false? Can two ideas or facts be equally true and equally opposite?

What is the benefit of holding to one side as right, thereby automatically making its opposite wrong? 

What if the opposite is true? 

I suppose this points out my untrained philosophical leanings. I dabble. 

I do find these lines of inquiry useful when faced with a thorny problem or an emotional response to something in my life. Wrapping my brain around the many perspectives of an issue is soothing to me. 

Our world is beyond black and white. It is filled with shades of grey (some estimate as many as fifty 😂).

I understand the urge to find an absolute truth. To cling to it like a raft in a storm. But I'm more pragmatic than that. My litmus test? Is it useful? 

Many things, even those seemingly at odds with each other, can be true simultaneously. Which means (in my little mind) that I’m not wrong, I’m just approaching the subject from a different perspective than someone else.

This realization has done wonders to silence my inner critic— both toward myself and towards others. 

Note: If you feel frustration rising and a litany of counter arguments spring to mind, if you grow red in the face at the idea that one would not fight for what is ‘right’ and true and good and holy, to you I say; I know. The opposite can be true.