I realised recently how much we tend to see and experience the world through a dualistic perspective.

Couples, political parties, good or bad, day and night, black or white…

It came to me in the quiet of the shower, observing the flow of water scattering into droplets. It felt like a metaphor for what physicists taught us: that light can be both wavelengths and particles.

Physicists taught us that paradox is true, that opposite things can be true at the same time. But it left me wondering about how much of this dualism is infiltrated into the ways we live our lives.

It’s everywhere.

It is often hard to see beyond dualism and break away from the two most obvious options.

It takes a bit of effort to think about a third way, to think in nuances, to sit in the uncomfortable messy middle, the world of the in-between.

It seems to me this attachment to dualism may be strongly tied to our belief in individualism and our sense of identity.

Some of us live with a strong sense of self, of I-dentity, of needing to feel independent, to have strong boundaries.

Some of us are more ‘permeable’ – less attached to their personality.

Did I just do it again? Falling into the old pattern and dual description, so hard to mentally escape from.

My sense is that this is all linked to Attachment Theory and there is a lot we can learn by better understanding our attachment styles and behaviours.

I also get a strong sense that if we felt safe to let go of our ego, we might begin to feel more connected to others.

If we began to let go of our I-dentities, we might become more open to our interconnectedness with others and rather than looking at it from the perspective of I vs you or them, we might reconsider what ‘we’ might mean. We might reconsider what benefits us all.

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