Both/And Is Freedom
I have spent many of my recent years working on the practice of using “both/and” in my life. Although this is a fairly popular concept, I credit my bff for being my both/and champion in my life. Love you, em (and appreciate the commitment to both/and so much so that it is tattooed on your body). This phrase is literally a part of our daily conversation. My therapist has also been in my corner shouting both/and in almost every single session we’ve had in the past two years. It’s something I keep coming back to. If you aren’t practicing the use of both/and in your life regularly, I would really encourage you to get it into your vocabulary. I think the society we live in teaches us, even from a really young age, to think in terms of the binary. As kids, we are often taught right and wrong, good and bad, yes and no. Our entire political system in the US is essentially based on the use of the binary - for the most part, people fall into one camp or another (and we see how successful that has been for us all). I get why we structure life this way - it feels easier for everyone. It’s much easier to make decisions when we think there are only two options (spoiler: there are usually more). I think the reality of life is that things are not black and white, there is a whole lot of gray in the world. And I think that’s a beautiful thing. I’ve been learning to embrace more of the gray.
What I’ve come to learn is that there is almost never a right way or a wrong way of doing something, the right decision or the wrong decision. There are typically a lot of options and some pros and cons along the way. I think coming to that understanding initially was scary because we are wired to want clear answers and decisions. But I’ve learned that embracing the both/and nature of life has been so freeing for me.
My best friend and I use both/and when we are talking about important life decisions, how to communicate with people and we also make jokes about it. Like if we are deciding between eating dairy-free ice cream or tacos, we might just say both/and to it and live our best lives ;) It works for important decisions and silly ones too.
This lesson helps me on a daily basis but it also helps when a major life crisis is staring you in the face and you don’t know how to face into it. In the midst of my own grief and through my healing journey, I’ve come to accept that life is not all good or all bad, literally at any moment. It’s always a mixed bag. Even on the hardest of days, there have been bright spots. There has been new learning, new love, new lessons, and little joys that have popped up even in the darkest times. When we are faced with obstacles, our brains like to try to tell us a story about what is going on and can easily convince us that our lives are terrible, everything is the worst and we should just give up. That is literally never the case. There is hope, there is goodness. It just might be hiding under a mountain of pain. But it’s not all gone.
Sometimes it takes a real moment of pause and self-reflection to dig into that story our brains tell us to recognize the both/and nature of things. I sometimes ask myself some critical questions in order to point out the other side of the coin that I’m not yet seeing. It takes some intentional work and digging to see things from a different perspective.
Both/and has helped me at work, in my relationships, in my faith journey, with family, in making important decisions, etc. In January 2022, when I was trying to make a decision about leaving my job and moving out of Michigan vs. staying where I am, I had to apply the both/and concept. It was too easy to see the situation I was in as all bad. Things seemed to be very unstable and unsure around me. I had every reason to leave the space I was in. But then, I opened up my eyes to the other side of things. There were the amazing people I had met and formed relationships with, my church community that I love, my house which has become a home, so many great outdoor spaces (the great lakes!), a few little spots in Michigan that I’ve come to enjoy, and a whole lot of other things. It wasn’t all bad after all. There was a lot of good. Ultimately, I made the decision to stay. And a lot of new learning and growing has come from it. If I went with the “right” decision at the moment, I would have missed out on all of that goodness. It was through embracing the both/and that I was able to find joy even in pain and uncertainty.
Let’s try to find the middle of things and try to stop clinging to extremes. More often than not, freedom is found in the both/and of life.
