joining

One of those very basic paradoxes that comes along...so basic that it goes unnoticed, and finds a dim corner, and settles in...and you know how paradoxes, unrecognized (only seen in the rushed halflight of everyday barelyconsciousness) can drain the soul's energies...but how, acknowledged, they can catalyze, energize, help to real-ize....or do you know? And do I know? I can't actually explain this, in so many words, but I think I know it...

Anyway, my (current) paradox seems to be this: that in pursuit of the earnest goal of avoiding conflict, I frequently find myself generating more. In its unrecognized form, simple: the avoidance, and the fact that avoidance is often impossible, creates constant conflict. By definition. A definition that yes, many already know. But the paradox, once acknowledged: joining the battle, as it were, I join Life as well. Life being never either static or stagnant. Life being never avoidant (also, perhaps, by definition). Life being at times a battle, in a manner of seeing. Between free wills. Among mutually exclusive possibilities. Between diverse lives, all seeking to continue. Among near-infinite complexities of systems, populations, ecologies.

Joining: I wanted to find it, first, possible to stop fighting. Anything. Altogether. But this I didn't find. Only a turning, a whirling actually, an about-face. Instead of turning my back to the chaos, turning my energies into it. Standing ground instead of running, in small part. Engaging conflict (of whatever kind, on whatever level) instead of fleeing it, more. Reversing the flow, I hope, eventually. Or only my little current in the flow. Joining the battle and finding how many of us, in how many moments of shattering illusions, are in fact fighting on the same side. Arriving at a point of confluence, convergence that negates any concept of conflict. Simply because currents unite as we fight for, and for nothing less than, our lives...

I'm not saying I know anything here. Not, at least, anything new. Just trying to see a little more clearly. See my way to joining.