The Strange Mathematics of Being Two Things at Once

🔴 SHOP THIS DESIGN → REDBUBBLE

We like ourselves much better when we're easy to explain.

Kind.

Patient.

Reasonable.

Good.

Preferably with absolutely no disturbing thoughts before breakfast.

Unfortunately, human beings are rarely that well organized.

There is the person we show the world.

And then there is the other one.

The jealous one.

The angry one.

The selfish one.

The one who remembers something from fifteen years ago and would still very much like to win that argument.

We call that side the shadow.

Not because it is necessarily evil.

But because we'd rather keep it somewhere behind us.

Carl Jung believed the shadow contained the parts of ourselves we refuse to recognize. And strangely, the harder we try to become only one version of ourselves, the larger that shadow becomes.

Because rejecting something doesn't make it disappear.

It just means it gets very good at operating without supervision.

That may be the uncomfortable part of duality.

We want light and darkness to behave like enemies.

One must defeat the other.

Good wins.

Darkness disappears.

Credits roll.

Very convenient.

Except darkness only exists because there is light.

A shadow isn't the opposite of you.

It is made by you.

And maybe becoming whole isn't about destroying the darker half.

Maybe it's about finally turning around and looking at it.

Not obeying it.

Not romanticizing it.

Just admitting:

Yes.

That's mine too.

The anger.

The ambition.

The fear.

The ugly thoughts.

The parts capable of things we'd rather believe belong exclusively to other people.

Because once you recognize your shadow, something interesting happens.

It stops being this mysterious creature following you around.

It becomes information.

You can ask why it's angry.

Why it's afraid.

Why it wants what it wants.

And occasionally discover that underneath something ugly is something surprisingly ordinary.

A wound.

A boundary.

A need.

A truth you didn't particularly want to hear.

Maybe that's why the idea of two selves is slightly wrong.

There aren't really two.

There is only one person standing between what they are willing to see and what they aren't.

The shadow was never somebody else.

It was you with the lights turned off.

If this design feels a little too familiar, you can find Two Sides of One Mind on Redbubble, available on clothing, stickers, home decor, accessories and other merch. Because apparently even your shadow needs somewhere to live.