Shall a person be flexible or firm? Is it better to explore or exploit? Science is better than art! Are these questions ill motivated? Any particular strategy to living will have a contrasting approach, which might seem to place a person in an impossible task to determine which repertoire to select from. I’m sure most of us have had discussions (arguments?) about which specific approach is Better (capital B!).
Once again, the metamodern philosopher, Hanzi Freinacht, helps illuminate why certain seeming paradoxes can be more helpful than either of the extremes alone. We want to have some notion of reality, stripped of our emotional connection to it. Yet, In part, what truly matters is the emotional resonance generated in reaction to a stimulus.
This reminds me of a quote that I can’t find a reference for; “All the interesting stuff happens at the interface.” For example, considering the Mandelbrot set, for a coordinate set, it’s trivial to see if it’s in or out when far from the boundary, but infinitely complex when “at the boundary” (loosely, as there is no boundary, in fact). So, if one wants to “surf the boundary” they will never quite be in or out of the set.
Similar, perhaps, to the teachings of mindfulness, where we can learn to (briefly, anyway) lose the experience of desire, suffering, or even self. But, given that we are biologically contained beings, our reflexes for homeostasis will bump us back into wanting in order to not die of starvation. Yet, once we have touched the place of not being tied to our needs, we can surf between emptiness and needing so as not to be constantly trapped by them.
Thus, wisdom might lie in being able to do both, oscillating between sincerity and irony on the margin and leaning one way or the other as the wave crests.