Paradox- A statement that although seemingly contradictory or absurd may actually be well founded or true.
Sentient life itself is a paradox. Consider that as far as we know we are the only beings on Earth that are aware of our own awareness. In becoming aware of our awareness, we create structures in order to better understand our awareness of the processes and objects we encounter in our existence. We create a framework of understandings linked and built together by the previous ones. Adding to these endless frameworks, is an agreed upon set of symbols called language, that allows us to communicate our perceptions of the frameworks to others. Communication is a useful tool, but in its current state is far from complete in and of itself. It allows us to discuss abstractions of what we perceive, but is far too imprecise and diffused to adequately convey the perception itself. It conveys an approximation of a perception. Even mathematics and numbers are nothing more than abstract representations of concepts, processes, and "natural laws" of a universe of frameworks, patterns, and organizations we invented.
Consider for a moment our senses. They are brought to us through organs specifically designed to penetrate certain aspects of our surroundings: ears receive and amplify vibrations of sound, eyes receive wavelengths of light, the nose receives various smells, the taste buds receive various types of chemical sensations known as "flavors", and much of our body is alive with the receptors of touch. Are these direct sensations? No they are not. Our senses must travel through an intricate network of nerve endings and reach the portion of the brain responsible for that function. The brain then interprets these impulses and fires a response. The brain also shuffles that response to several other portions of itself to allow us to process the information in relation to previous experiences and/or react via our instincts. Thus our senses are at least one frame removed from reality, our communication is probably several frames removed from reality, and all we are truly left with is our own thoughts and feelings. Considering if we think of them in terms of the language that we grew to understand as our native tongue removes them from our consciousness by some degree. Thus we are left knowing that we are self aware, but not truly being capable of sharing that awareness. We must take it on faith that others are experiencing some approximation to what we are experiencing. Thus the whole world relies on creating common frames of reference that are broad enough to include some varieties of existence, but narrow enough so that we can all relate to them. Anything that doesn't "fit" is suspect.
In the 'world of frames" we have three choices. We can change the size of the frame to accommodate whatever it is that doesn't fit. We can discover a way in which it fits with something already part of our framework, or we can reject it as something that will never fit in our framework. Of course the previous three options are part of a Western concept which fails entirely to consider a fourth option: we eliminate the frameworks all together and except everything as it is. This is a frightening concept for most people. They are used to their sorting and filing of information, they aren't used to looking at all the information at once and discovering its implications as a whole.
Western thought tends to rely heavily on reasoning broken down into two basic approaches: deductive and inductive logic. Deduction is moving from the general to the specific, whereas inductive logic moves from the specific to the general. Both require a linear process, either forwards or backwards, up, or down (but not both at the same time, or all directions at once). It is an "elevator approach" to thinking, a box moving in a square tube only able to ascend or descend inside an (often) square building made up of many squares stacked on top of each other. What would happen if we made it so the elevator could go sideways? Of if it were possible for the elevator to go diagonal? What if the elevator weren't even an elevator at all? It is possible to discern something from the world around us without placing boxes within boxes around it? Must we ceaselessly attempt to discover relationships, patterns, cycles, and order in our world, where there isn't order; must we find some method to force a sense of order upon it? What if we simply accepted whatever amount of order and chaos was already there and called it a day?
The concept of time takes a rather heavy beating in our society. We are always looking for more of it when we have things to do, and it never seems to last long enough when we're having fun. As a result, we build up an amazing list of "to do" items, a schedule of frameworks as it were, and race around like insane people trying to get them done, so we a little time left over to enjoy ourselves. Endlessly we approach this dichotomy. It reminds me of the hamster running on that wheel in a cage going nowhere. If you think going to watch a bunch of people driving brightly decorated cars in a circle for hours on end is senseless, obviously you haven't seen a busy highway on a rush hour! I have had the opportunity to be a part of this "rush" to get things done and while I often rail against it, I find myself easily caught up in it. We are conditioned to this anxious and rush hour mentality as surely as we are conditioned to walk one foot in front of the other. I often watch my wife race through her days and collapse exhausted in her bed day after day after day and wonder if she ever stops to consider why she does it. Oh she has answers, but they are all seem so superficial I'm not even sure she realizes what she's saying. My guess is that if she ever stopped to really question her efforts, it might slow her down, so she deliberately avoids any thinking that might cause her to question what she does. Yes, it is an odd thing but we have become so busy that the destination is far more important than the journey. It reminds me of certain species of fruitfly which, upon reaching adulthood, has only 24 hours to live. In that time they must accomplish a myriad of tasks: fly, feed, excrete, mate, and die. I wonder what our lives would be like if we knew we only had 24 hours of adulthood in order to live? Would we rush about trying to pack as much into that time as possible? Or would we want to take our time and savor a few things? As far as I can tell, most people would choose the former over the latter. Yet we measure time as precisely as we possibly can. We create calenders, clocks, organizers, and organization philosophies of every sort in an attempt to "squeeze" another nanosecond out of our day to do just one more task. The funny thing is that our own "internal" clock seems to be far more accurate than any external one ever was. Ever notice that "time flies when you're having fun" but drags on when you're not? I wonder if our "internal clock" is trying to tell us something?
A paradox is the placing together of two or more ideas which are so seemingly dissimilar that they shouldn't work, but somehow they do. An odd sort of synthesis or synergy of things which aren't exactly opposites, and aren't exactly similar either. When approaching them, one has to almost sneak up on them to appreciate the subtle beauty in which they dovetail together to form something revolutionary yet simple, frightening, yet breathtaking. The funny thing about paradoxes is that everything is a paradox, yet our Western training has created such limiting frameworks around us that we don't notice (Speaking of paradox, in order to have this discussion, I am forced to use the very frameworks I mentioned above or we wouldn't be able to have this discussion!). Spend some time looking around you. If you really know how to look, you'll discover a whole world within a world you never thought possible and the truly paradoxical thing about it- it was there all along.