“In most cases, strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin. A strength in one situation is a weakness in another, yet often the person can’t switch gears. It’s a very subtle thing to talk about strengths and weaknesses because almost always they’re the same thing.”— Steve Jobs
Approaching it logically, we suppose strength is the absence of weakness, and vice versa, right?
We’re wrong.
Strength isn’t the absence of weakness. Strength and weakness are one.
There can’t be one without the other.
Weakness is just the mirror image of strength, and conversely. They are the very same thing.
By thinking in this way, we are not just weak or strong, but sometimes we are weak and sometimes strong.
So we must see ourselves totally differently.
We can’t simply idealize ourselves as one dimensional beings anymore.
We must learn to know ourselves as contradictions. There’s more reality in it and that’s human nature.
Infact the intellect tends to work by setting one thing against another, perhaps necessarily so. It says “yes” to one proposition and “no” to another.
It conquers by dividing.
Fortunately we can train yourself to go beyond.
We can do this using a complementary approach. It tries to keep us open to looking for the truth.
It’s a both/and approach. For every truth there is an opposite, which is also true.
So the universe can be both purposeful and purposeless at the same time. It depends on our context.
We can follow the arguments of each position, so just keep both of them going at the same time.
As human beings we need to continously balance the two opposing drives, our two minds and that’s may be our most important ability in life.
Keep this vision of things helps us not only to survive but to thrive successfully.
Originally published at medium.com