The Importance of Opposites

Opposites exist in every corner of our lives. They mean more than we give them credit for. Without sadness, we cannot experience true happiness. Without the sun, we do not have rain. By giving in to these opposites, we can become more content with our lives and realize brightness comes with darkness. Nature tells us the same. Phenomena explains that without rain, there cannot be sun. Without death, there can not be growth and life. With one, we can appreciate the true beauty of the flip side. This year, I had the pleasure of learning that opposites exist for a reason.

Mental health is a true example of this phenomenon. When the lows hit, they hit hard. The lows make it seem like there will be no way to climb back up to the top. For me, anxious thoughts are the culprit. The nagging in the back of my mind makes it hard to enjoy moments of excitement or joy and, instead, replay worst-case scenarios like a broken record. I’ve fallen victim to this numerous times, wondering if I can build myself up to have the confidence that things will work out in the end. Within the darkness, a speck of light appears. Little by little, the specks grow and engulf the darkness. How could I tell if light appeared if it was not pitch dark? The light does not come all at once—it starts small, a glimmer of hope, and grows with time. Through understanding that anxiety and mental health are something I should not fear but instead learn to welcome and live with, I grew a newfound appreciation for the smaller joys in life and the excitements to look forward to.

From what I’ve experienced, this resembles the emotional turmoil people face throughout their lives. The emotional lows feel like darkness, and the highs feel light and bright. Good moments feel so good, and bad moments hit us the worst because we have the privilege of experiencing the entire spectrum. These opposites, as we call them, make the other end of the spectrum feel so intense, but that is the beauty of it.

In essence, feeling one extreme emotion may feel all-consuming at times. It may even feel like things will never get better or that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. But we fail to realize that from that low, the only place we can go is up. We cry so deeply so that we can one day laugh so heartily. We get engulfed in anger so that we can embrace forgiveness. This is what embracing opposites looks like. Looking into the face of your problems and saying, I know this feels horrible, but it will feel better soon.

My favorite opposite, which took me a long time to appreciate, is that with mistakes comes growth. My entire childhood, and sometimes to this date, I have beat myself up over my mistakes. I still vividly remember my first failing grade. I stood in front of my third grade classroom giving a presentation on a topic I can no longer recall. I finished presenting and the teacher called me up to her desk. She asked me if I understood what the project was asking me to do. I said yes and continued to explain it. As it turns out, I misunderstood the premise of the entire project and ended up getting a failing grade. I beat myself up over it and felt terrible about myself, which is why I can still remember to this day. If only I realized earlier that it was not that big of a deal.

Getting a bad result, sometimes due to my own lack of preparedness, and forgetting to do tasks were things that seemed to happen no matter what I would do. Whether they are silly mistakes that should not have happened or bigger mistakes that caused an intended consequence, mistakes were always a plague in my life. I dreamed of being someone who would get everything right and know all the answers. If I were to have one wish growing up, it would have likely been to stop making mistakes. It was not until I started growing up past high school and into college that I realized so many things in my life would not have happened without those mistakes. Like the butterfly effect, the interconnectedness of every niche of my life was a result of a series of choices or actions I had made. Doing poorly on a preliminary assessment due to mistakes instantly made me know the answer when it truly mattered. Messing up in my soccer tryouts led me to develop a new passion for singing. Mistakes exist for a reason, and there comes a time in everyone's life when they realize this.

I’ve been grappling with this my entire life. From innocent jokes about “opposite days” in elementary school to embracing that life is a series of twists and turns, the concept of opposites is something that I’ve always found fascinating. I have learned that opposites are not obstacles to be avoided but invitations to explore the spectrum of human experiences. They are not contradictions to be reconciled but forces to be integrated—forces that, when understood, can reveal life's profound lessons.