Embrace conflicting forces.
相反する力を受け入れよう。
In the Star Wars series, you screw up if you choose the dark side of the Force. But in our real life, that is not always the case.
I’m a strong believer of yin and yang (陰陽) — meaning darkness and brightness. It’s one of the Chinese philosophy that describes how seemingly contrary forces may be interconnected and interdependent in the world.
The concept of yin and yang is not a distinction between good and bad; it is an indivisible whole. We experience many things in our life. No matter how we label them — for example, good or bad — it is our life as a whole. We can’t avoid negative things, such as a death of a family member or a close friend, while we often come across positive things, like finding your soul mate. Everything is connected and forms our life.
We see many “Positivity Porn” and “Pessimism Porn” on the Internet. If we see it from the view of yin and yang, it’s not the matter of which one we follow or believe — it just tells us that we human beings easily lose sight of the interdependency between positivity and negativity. We can’t focus on only one of them because both are part of our life.
Our life won’t go anywhere if we are stuck in negativity. But the same thing happens if we cling to positivity. We can always choose to live with these two conflicting forces, which will show us the real meaning of our life.