Why Paradoxical?

Someone wise once said that the words of truth are always paradoxical.

Mar 07, 2025

Crossing Between Worlds is now available.

EXCLUSIVE OFFER FOR THE FIRST 50

For the Launch, I am offering THE FIRST 50 an exclusive offer for readers of Full Circles (FC) and Frontiers of Psychotherapists Development (FPD) when you buy direct.

Here’s what you will get:

Big 33% discount: You pay USD$23.45 (Full Retail Price: USD$35) for the physical copy. Free shipping.
Buy 1, Gift 1: You also get to gift someone another copy, at no cost to you.
Entirely free access to the ebook and audiobook (narrated not by an AI, but by this 46 year-old Asian-Aussie-some-say-American-accented author).
And why free ebook and audiobook? I don’t believe you should pay for the same content twice, or three times. This helps you save USD$18 + 28 = USD$36.

In case you are wondering, I know, it’s a crazy deal. I’m eager to get the book in your hands, and would love to hear your thoughts about it.

Here’s How:

Email us at admin@darylchow.com.
Title Email: CBW
Provide us your mailing address and nominate a friend whom you’d like to give the second copy to. Tell us why you want to gift this to this particular friend if you wish. We will mail both copies to you.
Once we got your email, a payment link will be emailed to you at the discounted rate USD$23.45.

In case you are wondering, why no online store to click and buy the paperback direct? Not yet. Embarrassingly, we are still trying to get that up and running properly.

You can also get the book elsewhere if you wish. Crossing Between Worlds is now available at major stores (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org).

Or give your support to the local bookstores. Bookstores must prevail!

Share Full Circles: Meditations on the Inner and Outer Life

Let’s continue with another excerpt from Crossing Between Worlds, on Why Paradoxical?

Why Paradoxical?

“Do I contradict myself?

Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”

— Walt Whitman

If you listened to the thousands of conversations I’ve had with people in therapy over the years, you would probably observe a pattern: I contradict myself.

For Annabelle, she has to learn to say “No.” For Joachim, he has to learn to say “Yes.”

For Katherine, she has to learn to focus on being “present.” For Susan, she has to learn to cast her eyes and make concrete plans for the “future.”

The contradiction isn’t just between different people, but also within each of us. It is intuitive to understand that everyone is different, but it is less so to consider how paradoxical we are to ourselves. As mentioned in the previous section on Why Seasons, at different times in our lives, we need to move in different directions. As you will experience working through the 15 spectrums in the Personal Paradoxical Profile (P3) to figure out which route to take, you will notice that, in the past, you might have needed to move in an entirely opposite direction. Maybe you needed to be more in community with others, while currently you need to learn to be in solitude a bit more than you are used to (see Paradox 4. Solitude/Community in the book). Or you might have often been in a caregiver role, but now you need to open yourself to receiving care. (See Paradox 9. Caregiving/Receiving Care in the book).

We are walking contradictions. As Lao Tzu would have it,

“The words of truth are always paradoxical.”

Leave me alone, but I need to be with people. I need consistency, but I yearn for novelty. I need to be the master of my own life, but I also need to learn to surrender.

Equilibrium is Not the Aim…

Coffee, anyone? Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash.

This book is not about helping you “strike a balance.” Balance is not the aim, or at least not in the typical way we think about what balance means. Take for instance, the so-called “work/life” balance that HR tries to instigate in organisations; it is a losing preposition. Nothing ever happens by living in the middle. Anthropologist Gregory Bateson said,

A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.

This ongoing “correcting for imbalance,” which requires us to move, is what keeps us “balanced,” or more accurately, counter-balanced.

Sure, on a daily basis, you might need moments of stillness, as well as periods of movement (see Paradox 13. Stillness/Movement in the book). But on a seasonal basis, there might be a more prominent direction to take.

Balance is not the aim. Direction and motion is.

…Neither Is It “Either/Or”

Before we take the first step in identifying the season that you are in and completing your Personal Paradoxical Profile (P3), I want to stress the point that even as we seek to correct for “imbalance,” please be mindful of not falling into “either/or'' traps. For example, we don’t need to focus only on the self and not on others, or learn to be in solitude and not be active in a community. These are false dichotomies. Instead of a dualistic mindset of “either/or'' thinking, we need to learn to embrace a non-dualistic “both/and” perspective. This is the paradox we are called to embrace.

This book is for readers who want to not only improve their emotional and relational lives, but to lead a deep, meaningful, and creative life. And in order to achieve that, you will find that many of the ideas in this book are specifically designed to help you take these seemingly contradictory steps.

How to Begin

We want clear-cut answers.

But when someone doesn’t know you, well-intended advice may have unintended consequences. This book doesn’t tell you what to do, but it will offer you road signs on this inner landscape. Fifteen of them in fact. You get to decide which path to take, based on the season of your life that you are in.

This is tricky business, because we are dealing with what’s invisible. Yet, as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said in The Little Prince, “What’s essential is invisible to the eye.”

Proceed to the next section to get started.

What Is the Current Season of Your Life?

Take a moment to answer the following question: What would you call this season of your life?

Reflect on this. Examine not only the events surrounding your life of late, but also look inward. How have you been feeling? What has been on your mind? Your response to this can take the form of a word or a sentence, a direct reference to the four seasons, or even a drawing. Feel free to use the space below to write it down, or turn to your notebook. I recommend that you date it.

THE CURRENT SEASON OF MY LIFE IS:

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Coming Up

In the next article, based on how you define this current chapter of your life, I’d share with you the main framework of the book, Crossing Between Worlds, which helps you define your Personalised Paradoxical Profile (P3).