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CONTRADICTION

If I wrote a book with all my ideas and perspectives on life perfectly outlined, with all my experiences, expectations, my ideals, even my dreams, probably the very few readers would be surprised and would even amuse themselves by pointing out my mistakes, my shortcomings, my imperfections and the contradictions they found on every page.

Guess if you don't find such errors and contradictions, it means you aren't reading the book carefully enough.

Who can do something in exactly the same way as he did it at another time, without constantly shifting from one position to another, whether in writing or in thought itself, whether in love, or in war?

Life is a miserably simple thing when you want to cling to it like one of those inflexible guardians of truth, who never change and cannot change their minds, and can neither admit nor play with the possibility of another vision, another perspective on the same thing, some topic about which there are numerous possible interpretations.

Since the individual cannot even be sure that the yellow color is in fact yellow, that the straight line is not actually crooked, or even that the music he enjoys today will not be a mere display of cacophony tomorrow, why declare himself an intransigent defender of a single belief, a single king, a single love?

You can't do anything without changing something, without adding or taking away something you don't like. It is impossible to present something again in exactly the same way, since the conditions in which it was made, imagined or lived are never the same.

Or, on the other hand, how can the individual contradict himself when he can never do or say something really original, something that has not been done or said before? Everything you do today has already been done yesterday, everything you believe in was believed before you, because you come from yesterday, with everything the past has placed inside you, and you cannot completely separate yourself from things as they were before you, even if in their current form they seem to be very different.

Today you can say that the sky is blue and tomorrow you can declare it green, and you will not contradict yourself, because it is really neither blue nor green, colors being merely an effect created in yourself, something that you yourself create, while you yourself remain immutable, just like everything that enraptures you.

How can you say that one line is different from another, or that it has become different from one day to the next, when they start from the same point, the one thing that makes them possible?

Or, again, how can you affirm today, “Thou shalt not steal!” and, tomorrow, that there is no law that deserves to be respected? Even so, you contradicted yourself, because in both cases you merely enunciated phrases, sets of words, which are mere combinations of different sounds, small and equal to each other, indifferent to the use you or anyone else makes of them.

How could you do or say the exact same thing at two different times? You can't really repeat yourself at any moment, and you're in permanent contradiction with yourself, but if it's natural to be like that, why is contradiction a problem?

You said yesterday that the sky was blue and today you repeated that it is blue, but in reality you lied, because the blue of yesterday is not the blue of today, and the repetition of an affirmation merely represents your desire to be consistent, it is only the result of a fixed idea that has taken hold of you.

When the individual says the same thing about something on two different occasions, he becomes a liar, because even if the object has not changed (which is not exactly true), he himself has changed from one day to the next, he is no longer the same person, and cannot feel or think exactly as he did the day or the minute before.

And when something enchants him today and again tomorrow, to the same extent, this is only possible because the individual has decided to die inside, he no longer dreams, and has decided to be satisfied only with the ashes of yesterday's dreams.

When everything seems the same to you, it is because you are no longer looking at what is in front of you, but at the memories of yesterday that are engraved in you, and you are too lazy to look for the truth of that face in front of you, your own face, your always changing face.

It is so fake and forced when a guy says that he never changes his opinion, being a man of great and immutable principles, intransigent with everyone and especially with himself.

As wrong as you are when you say you don't care if today you declare that you believe in Galileo, and tomorrow you will declare that the earth is flat

It seems a little unclear, so far, what I am trying to say here, but it is only for want of effort on the part of you, the reader, to understand. I am not talking here about what is right and what is wrong, but only about the contradictions that naturally appear in the life and actions of each one of us.

A contradiction in itself has nothing wrong about it because the individual cannot do anything against the constant changes in himself and if nothing changes, his duty, in order to stay alive, is to always look for something new, and that can only turn out to be a contradiction too.

When the individual tries to make his life a victory or a defeat, and does not want to follow the narrow and meaningless line in which the rigid discipline of a given society wants to keep him, he jumps from place to place, from contradiction to contradiction.

As I said above, contradiction is also just an illusion, but it helps us, it doesn't destroy anything, it helps us to endure things that otherwise would be almost intolerable.

Do not think, then, that you sit firmly on your fence while I alone jump to and fro.

You do the same as I do, and if you don't realize it's an illusion, you're mistaken and as wrong as you say I am.


By Maxx (Homo liber).

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