#barrylopez

Barry Lopez

I read a quote by Barry Lopez that I’ve been unable to push from my mind for very long: 

"No culture has yet solved the dilemma each has faced with the growth of the conscience mind: How to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's own culture but within oneself. If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great persistent questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”

The notion of paradox is something I find constantly, not only in culture at large, but also in poetry or discussions about poetry. We live in paradox and so too we write about it. I think this is the main reason why we expel clichés and welcome idiosyncrasies. Clichés don’t embody anything contradictory, or if they do, they’re contradictions that no longer speak to us—they’ve become tired, deflated. I’ve found that things that don’t make sense on the surface actually speak the most truth. Perhaps this is part of the poet’s mind, but I don’t think I’m alone in this.

As Lopez’ quote posits, we find paradoxes not only in the world around us but also in ourselves. We can’t delineate everything into black and white boxes. We always have to account for the gray. Like the Victorian concept of the shattered self, we are a mosaic of different personality traits. There isn’t a singular unit that makes up “Erin.” There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of facets that combine to form the self. However, many of these facets are in disagreement with each other.

For a simple example, I’m a vegetarian and I consider myself fairly naturalist in thinking, yet I have no qualms with squashing a spider that’s found its way into my bedroom nor do I have much of a problem with eating eggs and dairy on occasion (even though these too have explicit ethical issues surrounding them). On a larger level, I give in to illogical, emotional flourishes that come with being a woman (or even, a human being), yet I simultaneously try to acclimate myself into a logical, academic sphere (this dichotomy is probably the root of most of my stress). There are also nuanced parts of myself that I’m either unaware of or can’t put into words that I’m certain are at odds with each other.

This is, I think, why we are the saddest of all creatures. We have the ability to reason, we’re acutely self-aware, and with these comes a great deal of questions. We long for a feeling of fullness that’s very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.