Perennial Questions
The most important questions aren’t answered just once; they are answered repeatedly through the way we live. “Perennial Questions” is a series of meditations on the art of living for seekers and curious minds interested in universal truths and enduring questions.
How to Live with Contradictions
We are, in so many ways, our own contradictions.
The parts of us that fight for control—yet long for release. The self who seeks meaning—yet feels lost. The individual who wants to belong—yet craves freedom. The dreamer who fears the very dreams they wish for.
It’s easy to look inward and see the tension. But what’s harder is how we deal with it. Do we ignore it? Deny it? Let it divide us?
Or do we find a way to live with it?
The Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, writing in the nineteenth century, saw contradiction not as something to fix but as something to live into. His central insight was that the tension between opposing forces within the self is not a flaw or weakness—it’s part of what it means to be human.
Life itself is a paradox, and self-understanding comes not from erasing contradiction, but from embracing and reconciling it.
Similarly, Carl Jung, the renowned Swiss psychologist, later expressed a similar truth. For Jung, the inner conflicts we experience—the parts of us we repress, deny, or disown—are essential parts of our identity. He called these ignored aspects our shadow. Far from being a weakness, the shadow, when acknowledged and integrated, becomes a source of strength, completeness, and deeper self-understanding.
In this week’s edition of Perennial Questions, we’ll examine how these two thinkers—the existential philosopher Kierkegaard and Jung’s psychological depth—invite us to live with our contradictions.
1. The Paradox of Selfhood
Kierkegaard famously called life a “leap of faith,” a constant tension between what we know, what we believe, and what we can never fully understand. He proposed that the key to living genuinely is not in trying to fix these contradictions but in facing them with courage.
He writes:
“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.”
He adds:
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
This paradoxical relationship to time—being able to reflect on life only after it has passed, yet still having to live it forward—captures the essence of Kierkegaard’s view of the human condition.
We are forever living in the tension between who we are and who we strive to be. Yet the real tragedy, for Kierkegaard, is not that we struggle with contradiction—it’s that we try to avoid it altogether, seeking certainty in a world that resists it.
Rather than denying contradictions or seeking to make everything fit into a neat narrative, Kierkegaard invites us to take responsibility for living those contradictions. Selfhood, for him, is not a static state of understanding. It is an ongoing process of navigating the paradoxes of existence—faith and doubt, freedom and responsibility, joy and suffering—without waiting for an ultimate resolution.
2. The Shadow
Carl Jung elaborates on this idea of paradox through his concept of the shadow. The shadow consists of the parts of ourselves that we repress, deny, or reject—traits we see as unacceptable or unworthy (but also positive traits). It can include anything from anger, selfishness, and pride to vulnerability, sadness, or fear—emotions or impulses we’ve learned to hide because they don’t match the image of who we want to be.
But what happens when we repress these parts?
According to Jung, they don’t disappear—they fester, grow, and express themselves in destructive ways. The more we deny our contradictions, the more power they have over us.
Jung writes:
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
The shadow is often seen as the unconscious side of the self, but Jung argued that true integration—the only way to live with our contradictions—is not to repress the shadow but to acknowledge it and bring it into consciousness.
By accepting the parts of ourselves that we deem undesirable, we begin the process of becoming whole. The paradox is this: only by facing the parts of ourselves we’ve hidden away can we truly embrace who we are, with all our contradictions.
Jung saw the shadow not as something to conquer but as something to accept. In his view, wholeness arises from integrating our contradictions—recognizing that we are complex, multifaceted beings. Once we can embrace the full range of our emotions, thoughts, and impulses, we can begin to express them in healthy, authentic ways.
3. The Courage to Face Yourself
Both Kierkegaard and Jung argue that living authentically involves confronting the contradictions within us. For Kierkegaard, it’s about having the courage to face life’s paradoxes, not as problems to be solved but as experiences to be lived through.
He writes:
“To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”
For Jung, the courage is internal—it’s the courage to face the parts of yourself you’ve rejected, the courage to bring the shadow into the light.
Jung writes:
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
He adds:
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
For both thinkers, the task of self-understanding is not about eliminating contradictions but about living with them. Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith” involves accepting that we can never fully reconcile everything in life—there is always uncertainty, always ambiguity.
Jung’s integration of the shadow involves recognizing that we are not perfect, morally upright beings; we are flawed, complex, and sometimes messy—but this is the only path to wholeness.
Perennial Questions
What contradictions have I been avoiding within myself, and what might it look like to bring them into conscious awareness?
How can I live more authentically with the tensions and paradoxes of my own existence—without trying to fix everything?
What would change in my life if I accepted the full spectrum of who I am, including the parts I’ve hidden or rejected?
Final Thoughts
Living with contradictions is not the failure we often think it is.
It is, in fact, the core of being human.
Kierkegaard urges us to live with the paradoxes of existence—not to fix them, but to learn how to live through them. And Jung shows us that the way to achieve integration and wholeness is not to deny our contradictions, but to accept and understand them as part of the whole self.
By accepting both the light and the shadow, the known and the unknown, we cease trying to control the uncontrollable and instead learn to live with what is true. We stop pretending that we are simple, one-dimensional beings.
And in doing so, we start to live more authentically—embracing contradictions and letting them guide us toward who we are becoming.
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well.
J.W.
P.S. If you found today’s meditation helpful, consider sharing it with a friend.
I think this is one of your best essays ever! Although you’ve talked about both these people before and their ideas, this was so beautifully put together and explicated. And it reminded me of what Heraclitus said:“you can’t step into the same river twice; it’s not the same river and you’re not the same person. And it’s also related to what The Italian existentialist writer Nikolai Abbadanno talked about concerning possibilities. Every moment of our life is pregnant with potentiality, with possibilities and we must make choices. That is how we grow and I think both Kirkegaard and Jung were saying something similar. Thank you a great again for your Fantastic work. It is so much appreciated.