Embrace the Healing Power of Both/And
Friends of mine are probably tired of this quip of mine, which I am quick to trot out whenever I’m asked to field a question that feels like a false choice. Too often, we are asked (or ask ourselves) “is it this or is it that?” ignoring the possibility that it is both. (We also ignore the possibility that it is neither, but this is usually less of a problem – the question is rarely asked when neither option applies – besides, “embrace the healing power of neither/nor” just doesn’t sound as good.)
A few days ago, a friend asked me, am I being funny or annoying? Embrace the healing power of both/and. A few weeks ago, my kids had to stay a couple extra days at their mom’s, was I sad that I wouldn’t see them for 9 days straight or relieved that I got a few more days off to myself? Embrace the healing power of both/and. Every day I wonder, is my latest project at work a grueling slog or an exciting intellectual challenge? Embrace the healing power of both/and.
People rarely respond well to the suggestion – they want an answer. (Of course, I keep making it anyway and sometimes actually manage to dodge the question.) Now, management consultants are famously over-attached to their MECE1 categories, but why are the rest of us so prone to this failure mode?
There is something neat and tidy and reassuring about deciding that something is A and not B (or vice versa). The consequences are clearer, decisions are easier to make, we feel more in control. But it seems to me that the issue arises most often when the valence of the categories are very different – where one is a “bad” thing and the other “good”. We turn a blind eye to the fact that there is no real reason for the options to be mutually exclusive, trading logic for confidence in how we are supposed to feel about it. I know how I feel about good things and how I feel about bad things – how am I supposed to feel about something that is both?
Should my friend regret what they did because it was annoying, or feel a warm glow because they were amusing? Should I feel guilty for wanting time off from my kids, or like a good father because I miss them when they’re gone even a few days? Should I whine about how grinding work has been, or effuse about the cool problems I’m getting to solve?
One thing I’ve learned over the trials of the last few years2 – and this is where the healing part comes in – is that there is rarely one way that I do (or should) feel about something that’s happened (or is happening) to me. And this is more true the bigger the stakes. Am I furious about what’s happened or incredibly sad? Or, dare I whisper it, am I even ecstatic about it?
Ambivalence can be confusing, but it is highly underrated. Yes, it makes it difficult to create a simple narrative for us to file away in our memory, and it can make it harder to reason about appropriate responses. But it also frees us from having to repress part of what we actually are feeling just so we can keep up the fiction of univalent clarity. And it can help us sidestep the false choices we might imagine we have simply because each option seems to dictate a different, or even opposite, emotional response. Ultimately, getting more comfortable with ambivalence can help us become more comfortable with ambiguity.
Part of making sense of the world involves striving to build a model of the world that describes it more faithfully than alternative models. If something is both A and B, I want to recognize that fact, not discount it out of hand to feel more comfortable. If I feel both good and bad about something that has happened to me, I am more in tune with myself (and for the big things, more able to move on) by accepting that fact and giving myself permission to feel both ways rather than going through contortions to convince myself otherwise.
So in the future, if I should dodge your question by responding with my signature quip, should you roll your eyes in annoyance at my refusal to answer, or consider how these wise words might actually apply to the situation at hand? Embrace the healing power of both/and….
Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive. Contrast with the rarely used but much more common Incomplete and Overlapping.
There will be time to elaborate on these trials at some point. For now, suffice it to say that the last half-decade has been no cakewalk.