Thirty-five or more years ago, when I was doing a lot of sports writing, I began noting many paradoxes in various sports and started keeping a file on them. I collected several dozen paradoxes, but more or less lost interest in the subject after a few years. In more recent times, I’ve been noting many paradoxes in spiritual and related matters. The one that really jumped out at me comes from a recent White Crow Books release, A Doorway to the Light, by Carmen De Sayve and Jocelyn Arellano. The authors set forth much that they say has come to De Sayve from the spirit world by automatic writing, some from supposedly advanced spirits, others from earthbound spirits. One of the more advanced spirit explained why he (or she), while in the spirit world, decided to incarnate in the physical world. “We decided to experience our ‘what is’ by living within ‘what is not’ and so understand the fullness of our beauty, harmony and happiness,” the spirit explained. “We needed painful experiences to be able to appreciate happiness; disharmony in order to know harmony; and the limitations of the physical world to appreciate our limitlessness. The problem is that, once we are in the illusory world, we become so attached to it that we have difficulty leaving and returning to infinity where we belong.”
About the same day I read that in the book, I read a column titled “’Junkification of U.S. life,” by New York Times columnist David Brooks. He discusses the decline of cultural values in the United States, especially in the entertainment and art fields. “We’re now in a culture in which we want worse things [than what we had] – the cheap hit over the long flourishing.” He quotes psychiatrist Anna Lembke from her book, “Dopamine Nation”: “The paradox is that hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, leads to anhedonia, which is the inability to enjoy.” More succinctly, the more pleasure we experience, the less happy we are. That sure sounds like the dilemma in today’s world. Isn’t that what Emperor Nero experienced when Rome burned?
It’s sometimes difficult to distinguish a paradox from a conundrum, a Catch 22, an irony, or a simple enigma, but the key point seems to be that the result is the opposite of what you would expect. Drawing from the file I started 35 years ago, I pulled a clipping quoting the late George Carlin, a comedian, although another site gives credit to Dr. Bob Moorehead, a Christian pastor: “We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less, We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. … We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often…We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We’ve added years to life not life to years. We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.”
One of the more common paradoxes is that “the more we study and seek knowledge, the more we realize how little we know.” Another is that the desire for fame leads to the desire for privacy. One of my favorite sports paradoxes is that Rocky Marciano, the undefeated heavyweight champion of the 1950s, couldn’t make it as a baseball catcher because he had a weak arm; however, his feared knockout punch with that same arm brought him great success and fame. That brings to mind a personal paradox going back to my high school days when the team doctor said that my slow heart rate (40 beats per minute) indicated a “weak” heart, i.e., slow is weak, and barred me from running on the track team. But a few years later, a military physician diagnosed my slow pulse as a strong heart, referred to as an “athletic heart,” and approved me for military service.
Real Combatants
A very puzzling paradox for me is seeing men in military uniforms lined up to get the autographs of football players – real combatants praising or idolizing pretend or play combatants. Along the same line, there was a baseball player, whose name escapes me, that refused to give autographs. Fans called him unfriendly and sportswriters labeled him arrogant. However, the fact is that he was a very friendly and humble person who did not feel himself worthy of giving autographs. He was too humble for his own good.
Another favorite sports paradox comes from John Madden, a Hall of Fame football coach, who said, “As a coach, I learned that the better the player, the less he knows why he does and what he does.” And there’s the one about “trying too hard.” If a ballplayer “swings for the fences,” he’ll more likely strike out, but if he just swings without the extra effort while focusing on just making contact, his chances of hitting a home run are much better.
Safe driving on the road is paradoxical in that if a driver allows proper distance between his car and the car in front, he leaves enough space for another car to merge between them, thereby causing more hazardous conditions.
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