On Polarity
What seems like one thing, is actually the opposite.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about polarity; when something which appears one way on the surface is, in actuality, the inverse. Take, for example, my many years of travelling. For a long time I thought I was running away from my grief. But the more I do it, the more I realize I’ve actually been using travel to step into myself. One of the beauties of travelling is that it acts as a mirror—I’m better able to conceptualize my sense of self in relation to foreign cultures. And every time I come home, I have to face the absence of my mom. No matter how many times I do it, I still feel surprised when she’s not there when I open the door. Instead of running from grief, I’m forced to face it, again and again.
So often, the effort we make to avoid something ends up, ironically, becoming the very path that leads us to it. “So many things that seem like one thing, are actually at core the other,” says Cheryl Strayed in an interview with Glennon Do…