Yin and Yang: Two for the Price of One

There is an ancient truth in the symbol of Yin and Yang: everything that exists contains its opposite. Light carries darkness. Love carries loss. Life carries death.

We like to believe that we can have one without the other that we can be moral without sin, that we can be human without casting a shadow but nature tells a different story.

Carl Jung wrote, “How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole.”

Our shadows make us human. Only that which is completely in darkness has none.

Some things we do or think can make us feel guilt or shame. But that tension that internal resistance is how we exercise morality.

Each time we face it honestly, we strengthen it. Guilt and shame aren’t enemies of goodness; they’re the weights we push against to build it.

That is how we develop a strong moral code through resistance, reflection and repair.

Love, too, carries its own opposite. Love doesn’t risk loss; it contains it. Just as life carries death, the two exist together. There is no opting out.

Kahlil Gibran wrote: “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self same well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

Joy and sorrow, love and loss -- they take turns keeping watch over us.

Dostoevsky showed that redemption is not the absence of evil, but the courage to face it. To grow is to integrate, not eliminate. To love is to risk, and to live is to keep showing up shadow and all.

As John Green wrote, “It hurts because it mattered.”

That’s the deal we were born into: two for the price of one. Joy and sorrow, love and loss, light and shadow.