Negative Capability - On the Counter-Intuitive Art of Embracing Our Contradictions

The Romantic English poet John Keats first coined the term negative capability in a letter to his brother defining it as follows; “…when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reach after fact and reason…”.

Most of us are not that comfortable with ambiguity, but the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in one’s mind (or feelings in one’s heart), at the same time, without deciding that one of them is true and the other false, is what is at the heart of negative capability.

This is important because the foundation of our lives, whether we like it or not, is paradox. So the ability to contemplate the world without prematurely trying to reconcile its contradictory aspects, or fit them into closed and rational systems, is also important.

Holding this space for uncertainty—living in the tension between any two contradictory feelings or ideas—allows for creativity, for what is unique to emerge.

Ultimately, negative capability is the über expression of empathy.

Why, you ask, does any of this matter?

Because asking good questions—living the questions, as Rilke put it—is always better than assuming answers.

For often our assumptions are not born of reality, but of our attempts to avoid it—making things what we need them to be, rather than accepting them for what they are (very often ambiguous). And that is where much of our pain and suffering emanate from. Who needs it?

Cultivating a healthy respect for mystery—the unknowable, the ambiguous in life—is necessary for moving through it with a little intelligence and grace.

Embrace your contradictions. 

Sartre On Love

“I am mastering my love for you and turning it inwards as a constituent element of myself.”

This declaration (of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir) left me speechless when I first discovered it. It seemed to me a deeply profound statement on the nature of love, and still does.

Love is demanding, it hits all the soft spots—both pleasurable and irritable. It causes me to doubt my belief in it, despite the certainty that love is all there is.

It also delights in rubbing my nose in my own bullshit—the limits to which I play well with others.

And yet, I always find myself compelled in the direction of love, despite the imperfect execution.

Why the hell not?

Rilke famously pointed out that love is the work, for which all other work, is mere preparation. Well said. Meaning, it seems to me, that playing well together requires a little insight and effort.

Learning to love is simultaneously an effort which puts us in touch with the throbbing warmth of our own radiant core as much as that of our lover.

There are no guarantees of course—other than the assurance, one way or another, that we will be transformed.

I wouldn’t have it any other way—mastering my love for another such that, turning it inwards, it becomes a constituent element of myself—there is no more beautiful thing in the world than that.

Cutting the Crap - Living in Truth

“What does it mean to live in truth? Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating.” –Milan Kundera

Which is to say, that probably a lot of us spend much of our time trying to avoid the truth in our lives because the truth is powerful, potent and demanding.

The truth often demands action, making us uncomfortable, threatening our precious status quo and, by extension, seeming to threaten whatever degree of security and comfort we imagine our dysfunctional lives afford.

We dream we are risking much to follow the dictates of the truth, so we resist the move into this foreign and unknown territory – it’s scary! And there is no end to the reasonable sounding rationales we can manufacture in order to avoid the direction the current is taking us in.

But at the end of the day, this is a tremendous waste of precious energy that might better be used to navigate what is ahead. Better, instead, face the truth and summon as much courage, intelligence and wisdom as we can to meet the inherent challenges.

For the truth will not go away for our refusing to face it. It is what it is and exists independent of any mental gymnastics to dissimulate it, or wish it something other than what it is.

There is freedom in the truth, hard won, but worth the effort. Which is to say: allowing ourselves to see what there is to be seen and to feel what it is that we really feel, puts us in touch with the actual contents of our lives.

And this, correspondingly, generates a whole host of interesting possibilities for a more energized and innervated existence – one amped up with passion, vitality and gratitude for being alive to experience the whole, big, beautiful, messy business of it.

What does it mean to live in truth? Simply put it means being real and cutting the crap. After that, you can have fun experimenting and playing with the variables.