The Paradox

At the 2019 National Cohousing Conference in Portland, I attended a workshop session where one of the ice-breaking activities was to go around our small circle and share something good and also something bad about living in cohousing. When we got back together into the larger group, the facilitator, somewhat jokingly, referred to this as the cohousing paradox- that it can exist as both good and bad.

[Paradox: any person, thing, or situation exhibiting an apparently contradictory nature.]

Until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that being both good and bad is a paradox. We all have good days and bad days, or good years and bad years. I just assumed that’s life, not a paradox. And yet, it’s practically the definition of a paradox. Cohousing has both frustrating (bad) and enjoyable (good) elements. I suppose we strive each day and with each interaction to strike a balance between those elements.

I will enjoy writing more about the frustrations and joys of cohousing… in future posts. The paradox of good and bad came up this week not in a discussion about cohousing, but with one of my kids.

School started back up this week and it’s distance learning from home because of the pandemic. One of my kid’s teachers has assigned “180 days of feelings” which is an online journal where they track how they feel each day. On the first day, my kid had only bad things to say: “it was stressful”, “it was frustrating”, “it was exhausting”, “I think they’re not a good teacher”, “this was the worst first day ever.” I admit, my kid takes after me. I find the negative very easily and complaining comes naturally. Though I empathized, since it was really stressful for me too, I pressed for more explanation, and also asked wasn’t there anything at all good to report? For example, you were barefoot all day, which has never happened at school before. After some thought, my kid finally conceded that, “well,… it was nice to pet the cat during the school day.”

For a reward after making it through the first day, we enjoyed ice cream at home. The first day back at school was, paradoxically, both bad and good. I’ve asked my kid to make an effort to record some good feelings in the journal, as well as the bad feelings. You’ll be happy to learn that the second day was “pretty good”.