Dynamic Tension

This is another in a long series of posts about therapeutic metaphors, which are ideas or images that I use from time to time to explain or highlight a concept that can be useful in my work with clients. The topic today is about the inevitable level of tension in life and ways to work with that reality we all must face.

Most people "get it" that a certain amount of stress is actually useful. The very act of standing upright requires some of your leg muscles to be tight, and as you walk there is a continual shifting of tension among various muscles. Even when asleep certain muscles tighten without your conscious control in order to allow you to wake up with a dry bed.

The usefulness of tension is not just limited to the physical level of life. Emotionally, a certain amount of stress is adaptive. A person who never worried about anything would never take steps to avoid potential danger of any sort and would likely be blindsided by life very quickly. A requisite degree of tension is necessary to protect what is important.

Of course, so many people take tension to the extreme and worry about things that are out of their control or potential scenarios that will never realistically take place. Tension can achieve such great proportions in some people that it paralyzes them from taking action against the very thing they worry about. Others guard against the sources of their anxiety to such an extent that they avoid opportunities to live life fully by never taking growth-producing risks.

But there is another type of inevitable tension that can go unnoticed, which I call the tension of paradox. A mere conflict pits a truth and falsehood against each other while a paradox brings two opposing truths together. As Niels Bohr said, "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." Paradoxes transcend mere logic, and this is where the trouble comes in for some people. How can something be one thing and its opposite at the same time?

Examples of paradox abound: the more you treat others with compassion the more you will have available for yourself; the origin of true power is to admit defeat; you create your best future by living fully in the present moment; hurting others hurts yourself. Even in the healthiest of relationships paradox can raise its mischievous head: just ask any man who simultaneously craves both connection and autonomy.

We are therefore poised as humans between many pairs of opposing truths. Sometimes we lean by nature or circumstance more toward one side or the other but essentially we are like guitar strings stretched between two immovable posts, and the way we vibrate to the tensions that play upon us dictates the music our lives are capable of making. The dynamic tension of life emerges from the very fact that you are alive. Eventually your strings will go slack and your music will cease on this earth except for the echo of your actions upon the world. From time to time a string may break from being stretched too taut or plucked too hard and it's time for a repair.

A good therapist is one of many resources you can use to help you get your life in tune. The theory and technique for living the kind of life that resonates with rich melody and harmony comes from good instruction, from playing along with others and by practicing the right techniques until the notes are practically playing themselves.

Fill the world with the music of your life.