The Yin and Yang of a Profound Truth – Quotes on Quotes #4
The truth is it’s day #4 of ‘Quotes on Quotes’ week at the NDD!
Physicists understand very well that what seems to be is not always what is. The rest of us so often assume appearances and conventional knowledge are safe to follow. If we follow those we will pretty much have the truth, right? Well physics tells us that is not always the case in the scientific realm.
In our daily life that we can see and feel, touch and hear, the same is true. I have had two long relationships, my first marriage lasted 20 years, and I am now in year 8 of a relationship with my second wife. In both cases I have come to learn that their reality is often very different than mine. At times in both relationships we have all wanted to argue and believe that our reality is THE reality. The other person is not understanding, not obeying, not living by what are an obvious set of rules, methods, behaviors, thought processes that OF COURSE we all should go by. If they are broken then the other person’s motivations must be suspect.
I know I have been guilty of that, more when I was younger, but it still it comes up. I also know that both my wives have been guilty of it as well. And we have had to talk about it, sometimes painfully. Obviously my first marriage didn’t survive, but we actually were still able to understand each other better and not be so judgmental of each other towards the end of our marriage. My current marriage to Linda has had some of the same things, but because we are both older and wiser, we seem to be able to not be quite so rigid in our understandings and judgments.
It takes work but if you start from the assumption that you don’t hold the only profound truth about relationships and behaviors, then at least you have a way in to the conversations about how someone sees things differently than you. Not wrong, just different.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, who is the opposite of who you might expect.
Quote by Niels Bohr, 1885-1962, Danish physicist. He also designed his own coat of arms for when he was awarded the ‘Order of the Elephant’ by the Danish government. It included a yin and yang symbol and the motto in latin “contraria sunt complementa” (opposites are complementary).
