The Nature of Contradiction

“Everything that happens, when it has significance, is in the nature of a contradiction.”

Henry Miller wrote that, early on in Tropic of Capricorn. What in the hell does that mean? Every since I heard that sentence for the first time about six weeks ago, I can’t get it out of my head. It sure has got me thinking.

So… what? Anything really great is likely to be really painful as well? The best looking apple is the one you shouldn’t eat? We can’t have our cake and eat it too? Love bites?

Some people (more than we’d like to think, I bet) believe that there is one way and one way only to come to terms with anything, with everything. That one way usually has to do with God or the Universe or some manner of thinking that involves faith or hope or how we’re all connected. Oh, if only I knew what that one way was. (Just think how popular I'd be.)

I would like to think that life is simple. It is simple enough to wake up to the world every day, with a head on your shoulders for living, for just laughing out loud if nothing else. What’s so hard about that? I guess, if you buy into what Miller says, anything worth a really excellent belly laugh is enough to cause you to burst into tears just as easily.

You just have to decide which one you’re gonna do. Apparently, just now, I am headstrong in the midst of indecision.