Back to reality

dualism and life's paradoxes

Sunday around 3 p.m. is the thief of all things that are good in my world. 3 p.m. commences the end of the weekend, but more importantly, the end of my stay rock climbing the sandstone cliffs of the New River Gorge. I sweep the floors of our weekend home and a brooding mood settles in like the dust speckles at my feet. I toss my rainbow scramble of sodden, chalky clothes into my weekend bag. My boyfriend boxes our slightly bruised, uneaten assortment of tomatoes, ginger, and arugula into a cardboard box. We pack the back of my car like a defect version of Tetris. 

Sadness sounds like two beeps after my hatch closes shut. Dread sounds like two side doors slamming shut. Disdain sounds like two bodies plopping onto sting-your-bum-hot black leather seats. And if you’re wondering what whiney sounds like, well, that’s me. I look to my left, let out an arrangement of audible ughs and hmmphs, and say, with Emmy-worthy scornfulness, “Back to reality.” 

A pair of lips softly plant an “I know” kiss on my forehead. The engine starts. Three and a half hours and a few bathroom breaks later, the engine stops. Until next weekend. 

We do this most weekends - travel to and fro our little slice of heaven back to the blustering city that pays our bills. In five months, this place will be our permanent home, but until then, we stuff the car and hold hands as the rounded, green mountains of Appalachia get bigger and bigger until they swallow us into their belly of beauty. And each Sunday as infinite rows of townhomes replace endless walls of cliffs, I will say, “Back to reality.”

I couldn’t be more excited to pack up our life, one big brother cat and one little brother cat into a moving van and finally answer the question, “how long will you be here for” with a time frame that surpasses “just till the end of the weekend”. 

But, ah. That’s the problem. 

The problem is that West Virginia is not yet home. And it plagues me with discomfort that my “reality” is something I must return to, or rather settle into. 

It allows me to see that what I associate the makeup of my true existence with is binary. My life is made up of a reality and a non-reality. My reality is fixed to the life surrounding my permanent home. Work. Rules and constraints. My non-reality is the richness of adventure that comes in abundance outside of the city I call home. 

I use a fraction of my existence to justify my reality. It has left me wondering what reality even is. 

With a confident finger in the air, Einstein and Newton would say that reality is the underpinnings of the physical and biological world. Picasso would challenge the confident finger with a paintbrush and paint the argument that reality is an abstraction far beyond what the eye can perceive. And then there is Freud, probably holding a rat, who would insist that our perception of reality is driven by a runaway train of the unconscious mind. And we mustn’t forget Shakespeare and Jesus Christ. Not to conflate the two. 

When I ask the greats what reality is, one thing is for sure: No thanks to Stephen Hawking, my perception of reality collapses in on itself forming a black hole. The more I know about reality, the more confusing it gets.

What I do find interesting is that across the divergences of artists, scientists, and metaphysical thinkers, reality shares some common threads. One of those threads is the concept of duality which suggests that two fundamentally different factors can simultaneously coexist. Dualism is a significant component in theories of reality because it tells us that reality cannot be understood as a singular entity. 

We cannot comprehend good without evil. Nor light without darkness. Beginnings without endings. 

In The Red Book, Carl Jung says, “Day does not exist through itself, night does not exist through itself. The reality that exists through itself is day and night. So the reality is meaning and absurdity.” 

Jung, in an effort to illustrate the significance of dualism, points out that neither day nor night can be fully appreciated in isolation. They are defined in relation to one another. Reality is not a singular, standalone concept. Reality is the interplay of opposites such as meaning and absurdity. 

I find the concept of dualism to be magnificent. It brings awareness to the opposing forces I am blind to at any given moment. And it makes me question the depth of my perception of reality as I am guilty of believing that my reality is singular. Dualism makes room for beauty in my relationships - creating space to appreciate the complexity of the convergence of the mind and body of two individuals. Dualism also makes me feel smaller, in a powerfully captivating way. It is an invisible, yet loud reminder that there is a dark side of the moon. There are forces we will never see, yet forces we must acknowledge in our perception of reality and understanding of the world.

For me, this means that each Sunday at 3 p.m. as two car doors slam and one engine starts, I will remind myself that my reality is not a monolithic construct. There is a dance between opposing forces - joy and mundanity, mountains and townhomes - both of which contribute to my existence. My heart’s connection to West Virginia and my dissatisfaction with city life is a reminder that my perceptions of reality are shaped by my surroundings, but are also the interplay of my internal landscapes.

Reality transcends the confines of a single dimension. It is the marriage of contrasting elements - the light and dark, meaning and absurdity - that imbue life with its depth. My reality is not a mere return to a place, but an embrace of the duality inherent in existence. It is an acknowledgment that both the mountains I climb and the city I live in are integral parts of the larger reality I inhabit. 

There is freedom that has come with an awareness of my greater reality. Even more so, there is gratitude for the entire canvas of my life, not just the outer corners of my existence. There is not a reality and a non-reality - there is simply a reality that captures all of life’s paradoxes. What a joy it is to be among such a wildly complex existence.

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Thanks for reading this week, I am so happy to have you here. Special thanks to

Alex Michael

for his edits and feedback.

What are your thoughts on reality? Let me know in the comments and see you here next week!