Yin-yang: The Force is with you

This post is nerdy. It reflects on strategies to navigate the trials and tribulations of life as an ordinary human being who had a faith crisis and decided to pursue a postgraduate degree examining the said faith crisis. Despite the support from supervisors and multiple parties, the trip to Mordor is ridden with trolls devouring hobbits and dwarves and wastelands with dead people’s faces emerging from puddles. Casualties include a husband whose frequency of eczema breakouts uncannily reflects the regularity of his wife’s biweekly submissions and monthly menstruation cycles.

I'm almost kidding. Considering the dramatic rendering of lived experiences suspended between fact and fiction, the writer of this blog cautions from the outset that she documents the personal meanderings of a bizarre mind. 

Let's begin with the overarching framework of the writer's proposed survival tactics: the Eastern yin-yang philosophy. Thanks to her supervisor, the writer recently came across yin-yang thinking in writing up the last chapter of her findings. Her husband is also a fervent believer in this philosophy. She is, therefore, excited to apply the philosophy to her personal ruminations, choices, motivations, and life experiences. 

In brief, yin-yang embraces the relativity of life in flux and the inefficacy of absolutising, or conceiving in absolutes, the way we think about things. A Western framework of either/or thinking stemming from Aristotelian philosophy privileges the "good" over the "bad" or the "right" over the "wrong". My ideas are good, and yours are bad since what isn't good must be terrible, and what isn't terrible must be good. This religion/culture/way of life is right, so the others are inferior and stupid. Your preference for Star Trek is ridiculous because Star Wars is the way. 

Such either/or thinking, while sometimes practical and adaptive (and could also exist in yin-yang thinking, as will be explained soon), drives judgmental attitudes and behaviours, straining friendships and family ties. One would be hard-pressed to reconcile either/or thinking or absolutes with a contemporary worldview of time and space that resonates with Einsteinian physics of relativity. 

In yin-yang philosophy, everything, like time and space, is relative. The I-Ching, accepted by Taoism and Confucianism, reflects the Confucian understanding of change: "Like this river, everything is flowing on ceaselessly, day and night". While yin reflects female, receptivity, passivity, and cold, and yang, male, creative, active, and warm, these opposites coexist in a non-conflictual, complementary, "both/and" relationship because yin cannot exist without yang, nor yang without yin. As Lee Jung Young, in his paper titled "The Yin-Yang Way of Thinking", argues, the yin-yang symbol is the "category of becoming rather than being [and] it is therefore possible to express the divine nature which transcends every dichotomy and opposites [...] Thus yin-yang thinking is a way of both/and thinking which includes the possibility of [adaptive] either/or thinking".

How does this philosophy apply to various aspects of one's humdrum, homebound life?

1. In sickness and in health

Last August, the blog author developed GERD. Her inability to sleep at night, owing to her adventurous gastric juices rushing up her oesophagus, led to emotional upheaval and significant weight loss. She felt embarrassed for making numerous phone calls to harass her doctor about her stomach and bathroom activities. Navigating the dining table was a social minefield; she would turn down fried foods, chocolate desserts and creamy cakes, and even beverages as innocuous as ordinary orange juice, raising the eyebrows of dining companions who could not comprehend her austere diet, perceiving her as a health freak at best, or an elitist and judgmental food critic, at worst. 

As eating became fraught with tension and stomach acidity, the author witnessed herself becoming a nitpicking customer who would peruse the contents of each menu item for GERD-triggering ingredients. She learned to request that a particular meal be returned to the kitchen when the staff overlooked her stated preferences for removing onions and chillies.  

The author realised her vulnerability and dependency on various individuals ranging from her doctor, her husband and her family members in Singapore to the staff of kitchens at different eateries. 

Considering mutual dependency, the yin cannot exist without the yang. The author identifies highly with yin and reaching out for assistance isn't necessarily her forte because she doesn't like bothering people. It took a husband's persuasion to nudge her towards active participation of yang in managing her health. This included making crucial phone calls to the doctor, requesting a waiter to return a sandwich slathered with mustard sauce to the kitchen, and informing the host at the dining table that she would have to say no to fried chicken and chocolate ice cream. The author's family reminded her to continue consulting, not stop asking doctors questions, to go for another medical check if needed, and to maintain her weight because everyone cares for her and wants her to be okay. 

The author is not a hero in her own story. A group of people helped her back on her two feet on her road to recovery. 

2. Haters gonna hate, but not all critics are haters

Not everything said by others is constructive feedback. Not everything facilitates growth, even if the bearer of the message is an older person or someone with more life experience. Advice or criticism is relative to the nature of the relationship. Words of evaluation do not exist a priori to the interaction context and the relationship's quality. People sometimes say awful things, deliberately or unthinkingly, perhaps to undermine others. At the same time, some people sincerely care but lack diplomacy in conveying their concerns. Here, either/or thinking that's adaptive and creative is crucial - advice could be either helpful or unhelpful, depending on the intentions of the person who dishes it out.

The tricky bit is knowing the difference between malevolence and poorly worded sentences uttered hastily without deliberation.

Suppose the communicator and the listener have had a history of showing up for each other in crisis and demonstrating mutual kindness. In that case, the feedback is bound to be delivered in good faith.  Say you call a friend at midnight and vent to her about a difficult situation in your personal life or the workplace. She tells you, half-comatose, "to grow up and be an adult about this". But she continues listening to your detailed diatribe of the situation you've encountered, even though you've repeated your frustrated sentiments about other similar-looking scenarios involving the same party over the past ten months. You're in a rut, but your friend who thinks you're "sensitive" endures your monologue with drooping eyelids past midnight. 

The verdict: Your friend loves you. It's midnight. She could have ghosted you and pretended to be busy making ham sandwiches in the kitchen when you called (though she must be famished at midnight to make sandwiches). She could have bailed on you halfway into the call, "Hey, I saw a unicorn, be right back". But she's loved you over the past ten months, listening to you rehashing the unfolding dramas of your life over lunches, coffee, and hangouts at the park or at her place.  And here she is, still listening, despite her groggy state. 

Conversely, criticism that seems corrosive could be called out for what it is - abusive. Gaslighting ("Don't be so sensitive, I'm just trying to be funny"), backhanded compliments ("You should take on a desk job since you're so quiet'"), and making someone the butt of jokes in front of an audience ("Yeah don't even bother talking to him, guys, he's pretty useless") are warning signs of volcanic lava-spewing activity. Decide for your own good that feedback capable of melting the skin off your face needs to be categorised as unhelpful. 

Adopt either/or thinking that's adaptive here. Either believe in flawed reasonings or protect your mental health by rejecting 'bad' criticism.

How would one respond in social situations falling short of sensible human behaviour? Lashing back would excite your critic, who seems an oppressor and derives sheer joy from triggering a  reaction with his verbal abuse. It is best to say nothing. This will be difficult to do, your insides writhing from the acidity of remarks with pH levels crashing below 7, your mind spinning in search of a retort.  Unhealthy either/or thinking may emerge to demonise the critic: "This person is evil. He needs to be punished with unkindness. Because he is not me. I am a good person. I would not have said those things". Yet, this kind of either/or thinking is unproductive, and it does not have to be the only way of thinking. For you are in a state of becoming a jedi master, your oppressor, your most excellent teacher, guiding you towards the feat of holding your tongue and honing mastery of your reflexes so you refrain from reacting. "What stands in the way becomes the way". You unclench your fists and look your critic in the eye. You use the Force. 

Except in this case, your response is silence and a smile. Meanwhile, the birds chirp in the sky. Your critic, growing bored, has nothing further to add to his discourse of pain and pleasure. A brief in-between period of quiet space for reflection ensues as he fumbles for other ways to get under your skin. He has to either up his ante by firing another cancerous remark (assuming he's intelligent enough to pull that off immediately), or change the direction of the conversation due to awkwardness so thick in the air you could slice it with a knife.

Awkward silence isn't such a bad thing. Especially when it comes to dealing with difficult people.

But what if you could also identify with the oppressor? What if you could transcend the binary of enemy/victim, imagine yourself in the shoes of your critic reeling from your silence, confounded and confused, and view the critic as a fellow human with insecurities and dashed expectations in life? What if your critic is someone with a troubling childhood deprived of unconditional parental acceptance and the innocence of carefree play? What if, while refusing to internalise his unhealthy sentiments in adaptive either/or strategy, you simultaneously, in both/and fashion, see yourself as both the critic and the criticised? 

That, dear reader, is yin-yang.

Photograph from Melissa Vasco of lifeofpix.com