The Intelligence of the Opposites
If life can be viewed as two stages, my second started when I realised that what irritates me in others indicates my next area of development.
I’ve come to love the famous sayings of Carl Jung that “everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves” and also that “the meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
I’ve always been attracted by my opposites. Yet, in the beginning, I would look at them with the eyes of insecurity and define them as my weaknesses in relationship to someone’s strengths.
Today, I know there is no such thing as strengths and weaknesses for they are the same, and what I have perceived to be my opposites, have always served me as my ultimate teachers. That opened me to experiencing life in a totally new way and marked the transition from a life focused on achieving independence to a life thriving on interdependence and from a fear-driven life to love and purpose-driven one.
While we often seek support in like-minded people, we get the ultimate support for our growth and flourishing in people who we perceive in some way as opposite to us. As Marie-Louise von Franz says: “if we can stay with the tension of opposites long enough — sustain it, be true to it — we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality.”
Intelligence of the Opposites is our capacity to continuously expand our perspectives by consciously creating opportunities to experience the transformative tension of what we perceive to be opposite to us people or opinions, and learn from them.
Some Quotes on Opposites in Our Life
Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness. — Louis Aragon
All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites. Marc Chagall
Music is the silence between the notes. Claude Debussy
Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. — Tony Schwartz
Diversity: the art of thinking independently together. — Malcolm Forbes
The opposite of love is not hatred, it’s fear.
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