I’m gonna take my time with this message. I talk about paradoxes a lot here. A paradox is when multiple things are true at the same time. But it’s hard to embrace paradox when, on the surface, the connections we make with people look like they only lean toward two options: a clean exit or a clean union. But that’s not what you truly desire. What you’re actually cultivating is how to live comfortably in the complexity inside those choices. That’s the truest desire.
So, you end up with highly charged, messy connections. That’s the human experience in a nutshell. They come with contradictions, with irresponsibility, with one person sometimes carrying more weight than the other. When that happens, the instinct is to either run toward escape or force a merger. But that’s not the invitation.
What it’s really inviting us to do is to hold the paradox without flinching. To soften the urge of asking “how” and “why” as a way to find a formula that leads to one clean conclusion. Those “how and why” questions are just fear looking for a loophole, a way to get out of the discomfort.
When you hold the paradox (accepting that the discomfort is the training ground), you actually become more intentional inside the binaries. You can choose: exit cleanly. You can choose: union cleanly. But you don’t collapse into them just to escape the tension. If you collapse into an exit, you’ll meet that same unprocessed energy disguised as something new. If you collapse into a union, the contradictions get amplified tenfold.
This is a microcosm of the bigger moment happening in the world right now. All this rigidity, all these binaries, all this trapped-but-aligned energy is inviting us to think paradoxically. To live in complexity without assuming the comfort is too good to be true or the discomfort means something’s wrong.
This is paradox practice. The only way out is to freestyle your way through the discomfort as it shows up. This means you’ve got to start paying more attention to your current connections and relationships—professionally and personally.
What relationships keep showing you is how foundational perception really is. Two people can be looking at the same exact thing and still walk away with completely different conclusions. That difference in perception can be either fascinating or frustrating, especially when survival patterns are involved.
This has nothing to do with a lack (or lag) of knowledge. Most people do know. What creates the dissonance is the grip of fear and the mindset of, “How do I let go? How do I soften?” And there’s no set formula for that. It’s not about wishing it was different or looking for a shortcut. The only way perception clears is by facing discomfort honestly, in real-time.
Avoiding honesty is like trying to stop the body from purging. It doesn’t matter how long you resist, it’s going to keep pinging you until it releases. Dishonesty is pretending you don’t feel messy. Forcing yourself to look like you’re fine. Performing “business as usual.” Entertaining energies out of habit that are actually the very thing causing the need to purge.
At some point, enough is enough. The cycle of crashing, burning, hiding, and distracting gets exhausting. And of course, the little dopamine hits from the clever tricks you’ve picked up along the way can be addicting, but eventually it comes down to a choice: either the addiction takes you out, or you let the purge move through and clear it.
And here’s the paradox: when you finally allow that purge, it distorts everything you’ve been convincing yourself was true. Suddenly, the performance collapses, and what’s left is something real.
We’re living through very chaotic seasons of our humanity right now, and it’s going to be like that for quite some time. This isn’t fear-based; this is what a global reckoning with hidden truths looks like. We’re witnessing an unraveling of questionable behavior and collective decision-making on political, religious, economic, entertainment, educational, and sports stages. And to face those truths, you’ve got to stop ignoring the uncomfortable truths within yourself.
Stop trying to find your “match,” your “tribe,” your “community.” You don’t “find” any of those things. You align with energy that’s open enough to hold complexity without flinching. Searching pulls you out of yourself. What you’re really craving is a mirror; someone or something that cleanly reflects back the truth of where you are. But when you’re in search mode, you mostly focus more on people who are also stuck in search mode.
Shared lifestyle doesn’t equal alignment. Liking the same music, the same food, the same shows—none of that guarantees resonance. Instant chemistry doesn’t equal alignment. Loyalty to history doesn’t equal alignment. That’s not alignment, that’s survival of the codependent.
Yes, we’re all surviving, but survival looks different for everyone, and those differences are often wrapped in warped perception. We think we want material, financial, or relational alignment, but what we actually want is the capacity to exist in the complexity of those alignments without avoiding, distracting from, or pretending they don’t exist.
Alignment is an inside job. It means facing your own contradictions without using someone else as your trauma dumping ground, especially when you know you’re dumping and leeching. When you’ve tapped into that inner alignment (and you’ll know when you have), you become an observer. You recognize when your impulses come from survival mode and when they come from alignment.
Once you’ve felt that inner alignment, your tolerance for anything less drops to zero, no matter how enticing the circumstances might look on the surface.
If this topic of paradox and alignment resonates with you, I’ve got a fiction series called The Light In Between that dives into how these dynamics actually play out in real-life situations. You can check it out in my bookstore, or grab it on Amazon and Audible. In the meantime and in between time, be kind and gentle with yourself, as I do the same.
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