I have been trying to feel rather than think my way into a more effective way to work with paradox. 
 
My thinking (rather than feeling) on this got started in a conversation with leaders from other states regarding a paper Charlie Bruner (of the Build Initiative) was writing on the paradoxes of system building.    As soon as the title of the paper was shared it prompted one of those moments where suddenly something that I didn’t even know was fundamental to my work, was revealed, in one quick instant. 
 
Of course there were paradoxes in system building! In fact the more I thought about it the more I realized that a core practice of system building might fundamentally be about paradox. And that learning to work with paradox might be one of those practices that enables system building at its most foundational and fundamental levels.
 
In starting to explore my inklings around paradox I found the following definition, “Paradox is the art of balancing opposites in such a way that they do not cancel each other but shoot sparks of light across their points of polarity. It looks at our desperate either/ors and tells us that they are really both/ands.” (M. Morrison)   
 
What I like about the definition is how it brings an image to mind that reminds me that even in situations where I am convinced that my perspective holds all the “light/truth/is right” that just across the way, should I choose to see it, is another perspective that holds “light/truth/rightness” potentially in equal measure. And that there is power – shooting sparks of light – that I could see and work with, were I to be in a state of mind that was regarding the situation as a both/and rather than either/or. Whew…
 
I would have to be first in line were there ever a survey that asked, “Who has spent hours, months, perhaps even years of his/her life trying to think harder than the next guy/gal about, for example, whether we should invest in programs or infrastructure or who “knows best” and should make more of the decisions, folks who work in local communities or folks who work at the state level?”
 
And in my thinking harder mode…I was defending my side, I was gathering research to support my side, I was painting the other side as lesser, etc. All practices that only reinforced my mental model that this was an either/or situation.   All the while missing…the shooting sparks of light.
 
So these days, I am looking for opportunities to practice feeling and sensing my way around paradox. I am choosing to be fully immersed in both ends of the paradox and to spend quiet time in between the poles. I am practicing noticing what I feel, when I am not trying to defend but actually being present to what is emerging at the intersection. 
 
I’ll be wondering what it might mean, when those sparks I think I am seeing, start shooting like the fireworks we’ll all be enjoying this week-end. Hmm…