How often do you think about paradox in your life, let alone deal with it?

I enrolled in school last year after my bout with unemployment. I decided that I needed to upgrade and retool my skills. It’s a challenge, but it’s good for me as a learning and development professional to keep building my knowledge and honing my skills, especially considering how much technology has impacted the field over the past decade.

Currently, I am in the process of writing a paper about the importance of course evaluations, not a particularly an exciting topic, but nonetheless, I gotta write it.

During my research, I found an article entitled, Paradoxes of Online Teaching by Bair and Bair. It’s a fascinating examination of the contradictions the authors experience as online instructors.

These contradictions or paradoxes are defined “as being the coexistence of two competing truths.”

They go on further to say that these two competing truths create discord for individuals experiencing them.

Paradoxes have been intriguing me for a while. I remember reading articles about them when I was in CSU’s Diversity Management Program. The paradox of diversity is one of my favorite concepts.

I even wrote about paradox in my journal back in 2009:

I realize that life is a balance or struggle (depending on my frame of mind that day) between polar opposites. I vacillate between:

black and white

shades of gray and a rainbow of colors

better and worse

loneliness and togetherness

generosity and selfishness

grace and impatience

inactivity and creativity

satisfaction and dissatisfaction

empty and full

just doing it and staying stuck

sitting and standing

stillness and noise

boredom and fun

disgust and pleasure

sweet aroma and funk

trusting God and not trusting God

I blog to make meaning of my experience as I push forward GoneGirlGo. Right now, I’m feeling the dilemma of the paradox. It keeps emerging and keeps me up at night. Since pushing this movement forward, I have been dealing with these paradoxes:

Hard but fun

I wrote about this after my trip to Vegas. Life is fun but hard. As much as I want to have fun, I need hard if I am going to grow.

Slow and fast

Every time I think about the fact that this movement started in January, I am amazed. Things have happened quite fast. But on the other hand, there are things that I think are happening too slow. I see the big picture, but I can’t seem to catch up to it.

Big picture and details

I will be introducing my program next Saturday. While I saw the big picture of the experience a while ago (OK maybe a month or so ago), I still wrestle with the small chunks. I’m good at focusing on the big picture, but I can’t let the big picture be my sole focus. I have to attend to the small chunks for the big picture to come into fruition. My discord enters into play because there are a lot of small pieces.

Private and public

I have decided to let others in my head. My private thoughts are now public. It’s risky, but it keeps me grounded and accountable. That might seem goofy to some, but trust me, if I didn’t share this, I wouldn’t have pushed anything forward. I would be laying in my bed every night watching foreign movies and not doing anything to make my ideas happen.

Dreaming and doing

It’s always been easy for me to dream, but hard for me to do. And the reason I didn’t push forward was that I didn’t want to fail. I didn’t want to be haunted by my dreams that I thought would turn into nightmares. Now I am dreaming and doing both at the same time. I don’t let the thought of failure haunt me as much. It creeps up now and then, but it hasn’t made me stop in my tracks. To me, that’s an accomplishment.

Needing help and not asking for it

Need I say more.

And there are a couple of random paradoxes that I won’t bother to mention. I’ll just deal with them privately. The dilemma of the paradox is a cleansing experience for me. It helps me to adjust to the uncertainties that exist in life. It helps me realize that life can’t be “perfect,” but it can be just as it is. After all of this thinking, I still don’t have any answers or resolutions. I might have a little more understanding, and that is fine with me.

And you? Do you ever experience the dilemma of the paradox? How do you navigate life so that you’re not sidetracked, discouraged, or full of doubt? Drop a line in the comments below or on Facebook. You know you can email met too at zoe@gonegirlgo.com.

Peace