con·tra·dic·tion/noun: a combination of statements, ideas, or features of a situation that are opposed to one another

I have been thinking recently about the contradictory ways Americans want to address the historic evils of the country’s past.

Some have argued that the only way to heal those wounds is to open them, to excise the infection through a truthful and painful reckoning with this country’s past, as South Africa did in its approach to restorative justice, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Others say that it is best to focus on the future  rather than dredging up the past, never acknowledging that those problems continue to exist in the present. Their motto might be, “Forgive and forget,” or perhaps more accurately “Forget so there is no need to forgive.”

This country’s history is fraught with contradictions between its aspirations, including the stories of exceptionalism it tells itself, and the reality of its past and present.

LIfe also requires that we manage a seemingly endless set of less consequential but common contradictions. For example:

Sometimes our strengths are also our weaknesses. 

Sometimes too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

Sometimes getting what we want teaches us that it wasn’t really what we wanted.

Does that mean we shouldn’t develop and use our strengths? Or that we shouldn’t enjoy “good things”? Or that we shouldn’t aspire to what we want? 

The answers seem obvious: “No.”

Resilient people recognize that important choices often present themselves in contradictions, and that our responsibility to ourselves and others is to use our collective experience, best thinking, and accumulated wisdom to sort our way through them.

Hopefully, in that same way we will be able to call on this country’s resilience to fully examine its contradictions as well as its aspirations. 

What such contradictions have you observed?