Paradox Journal: Responsible vs Spontaneous

From balance to harmony

This Wednesday series of posts is intended to be the seed bed for a self-awareness journal currently in development. The journal concept is a reaction to two life-times of reading mountains of wisdom books on what boils down to living a better, happier life. There are two of us on this journey ... a PhD psychologist who has specialized in the use of assessments to help people on their journey and a writer who began adulthood in the school of "Think and Grow Rich," ala Napoleon Hill and then wandered a long path filled with flowers and weeds seeking wisdom and joy.

Paradox … defined from the perspective of self-awareness is the often confusing tug of virtuous, although contradictory, values. The trick for dealing with paradox is not to "pick one" as the better of the two, but to dance between them allowing each to brighten and empower the other, banishing guilt as the all-too-frequent by-product of not reaching the perfection of either end of the spectrum.

Joseph Campbell's video "Finding Joe" launched both of us on a strange and ill-defined Hero's Journey, even more reading, and an endless conversation trying to figure out what, indeed, was that Holy Grail we seemed to be chasing.

One thing became clear ... reading was not enough so we began to tell our stories in a loose form of life review and sporadic readings of our journals. Soon, we felt the need for more structure to guide our individual work and which would also allow space for new insights to arise from our conversations. This led to the idea of developing a journal, or series of journals, to provide structure that would lead to integrating the gathered insights and wisdom into our day-to-day living.

The foundation of this journal will be stories ... your own own stories plus our stories and others to serve as inspiration and guides. Too often journals become dumping grounds of whining and ranting rather than instruments of transformation. Lacking gentle and inspiring direction, blank pages can be intimidating spaces, so this journal will ask you to reflect on your own life experiences in order to make sense of the paradoxes that surround you.

An example of one of the dimensions of paradox is Responsibility to Spontaneity and here's an example from Joyce's journal.

Life taught me to be responsible; I always wanted to be spontaneous, responding to the whims of the moment.

There are rules: The Ten Commandments, the legal system, "house rules," the how-to-get-good-grades rules. Within the boundaries of those rules exists a zone of safety and acceptance. Beyond, there be dragons, known as the spontaneous ones.

The dragons began to whisper to me the summer after my junior year in high school when the manufacturing plant where my father worked shut down. He had played by the rules for ten years but suddenly his job was gone and there were few options in our small, southeastern corner of Kansas.

When a new job possibility for him appeared in Arkansas, it upended our predictable life. The job wasn't quite ready however and, as the new school year approached, the question of where I should start school loomed. Finally, it seemed to make sense for me to be in Arkansas in order to start school even before my parents moved. The result was that, at 16, I lived in a rented room in a boarding house and began my senior year in a new school while my parents remained in Kansas.

Suddenly, I was "off the farm," living in a city, making my own decisions, meeting new friends, exploring a new life. I was FREE. And, while I might have gone a bit teenage wild, my responsibility roots held firm ... no smoking, drinking, drugs, wild parties, etc. I even studied more than I had at home since the new school was more demanding than the former one.

But, the dragons were calling my name. I made friends with a Catholic girl who rented a room in the same boarding house. (In my tiny world, talking about different religions was a radical activity.) My new best school friend was married and shared some parts of her life as a high school student/military wife. It was 1962 and I saw "whites-only" water fountains and went to a school where there were no black kids. My first boyfriend came along and we discovered the joys, and fears, of making out. I became a part-time waitress at a neighborhood BBQ stand and learned how to flirt with the customers.

My time was mine and my world grew larger as spontaneity tugged against the bonds of responsibility. The experiment only lasted one semester until my father wound up taking a job in Tulsa. I reluctantly rejoined "normal," however, I had tasted freedom and that pull of new places, new people, new experiences. The spontaneous life was already in my blood and still bumps up against responsibility even as I sit here, responsibly writing while being called by a sunny day to go play.

Balancing these competing commitments seems daunting. I’ve played hundreds of time management games, purchased numerous day planners, and then tossed them all out when spontaneity felt abandoned and demanded my attention. Someone recently suggested replacing the word balance with harmony. That struck a chord, so now I’m experimenting with an easily-erased whiteboard that allows me to capture and schedule my responsibilities and then reshuffle them when a friend invites me to hear some music this afternoon on the pier.

Probably most of us feel the conflicting pulls of responsibility and spontaneity. What’s a story of a time when you had to dance between those two poles in order to create harmony in your own life?

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In good times and challenging ones, practicing gratitude helps us recognize the good things in our lives and build resilience for the challenges that come our way. Gratitude journaling is one of the best ways to better understand yourself and deepen your practice of gratitude.

Any journal will do … however, here are two we are biased toward:

Gratitude Miracles, a 52-week journal filled with inspiring quotes and the science behind 13 amazing benefits of gratitude. Available from amazon.com:

Or, Gratitude Mojo, a 26-week, workbook format, which comes to you free with your annual paid subscription … including one copy for a friend because having a Gratitude Buddy makes the journey better.

We want to help everyone develop a deeper practice of gratitude, therefore, all posts are always free. … However, it is paid subscriptions that help support this work.