A Bitter Drink
Do it or do not do it—you will regret both. A study of dichotomy.
By: Chelsea Adams
Dear neighbor,
Ours is a time of forced and false dichotomy.
Our conceptions of personal and individual freedom should include the understanding that we are nothing without one another. The point of improving ourselves intellectually, emotionally, economically, physically, and spiritually is not to become better than others, but to become better for others. "Self-made man" is a well-intentioned fiction.
Courtesy of the National Postal Museum Collection
Our minds are pliable enough for both patriotism and rage toward our country. Is it normal that I should not be able to count on two hands the number of times I have called friends or loved ones with my heart in my throat because they have gone to work in a school or an office or attended some event where there was gun violence? Is this a feature you would expect of everyday life in a great nation? I dare you to imagine better greatness.
We can ache with pride and grief for institutions and communities that are deeply flawed, perhaps irredeemably so. We can find ourselves suffering and even dying for homes in which there is little safety or causes in which there is only fleeting hope. We might casually express our deepest, most complex convictions to a perfect stranger and struggle to muster a "hello" for our closest kin.
Fight in Chesapeake Bay, Unidentified artist, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
We can hold truths as permanently provisional. It's frankly way more fun to do so than to squander the gifts of ceaseless curiosity. We can discover wellsprings of spirit in a question as often as an answer and in lived experience as frequently as law.
We can outgrow deeply-held convictions and in the process become truer to ourselves and others. We are who we are as much by chipping away as by additive growth. Ships of Theseus, all caught in the same storm. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!
We are here to explore the space between certainty and doubt, between reverence and iconoclasty. What is the point of the mind of man, built or made or evolved into this delicate instrument strung tight with contradiction, if not to play in paradox?