Accepting Nuance Will Free Your Mind
We often want one definite answer in life. Something is either right or wrong, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. Our minds gravitate toward generalizations and recognizing patterns because they evolved as effective survival strategies. But when we don’t need to live in constant survival mode, binary thinking can be limiting and damaging.
It can lead to more internalized blame, self-doubt, perfectionism, isolation, and misunderstanding with others. People and life are complex and dynamic. Though we’d want things to be black and white, reality almost always lives in a grey area.
Embracing nuance affirms that we, indeed, can:
Be loved by our parents & still be hurt by them (It doesn’t make you a bad child for acknowledging the pain)
Enjoy something & still want something different (This doesn’t make you ungrateful)
Be healing & still struggling (This doesn’t mean you’re regressing)
Make a mistake & still not be an immoral person (We are not defined by singular mistakes)
Make a good decision & still not be “better” than others (We are not defined by singular good deeds)
In practice, accepting nuance can look like:
Being curious instead of argumentative
Validating your own and others’ emotions
Letting ourselves & others change our minds
Holding tension without rushing to fix it
Accepting multiple truths at the same time
Considering additional and relevant context
When we embrace nuance, we accept reality for what it is. Rather than exhausting ourselves trying to change or derive greater meaning from it. It frees us from the constant surveillance so we have more capacity to simply be and exist.
