I just recently finished reading Derek Sivers' new book How To Live. Well, to be fair, I just finished listening to his new book.
The book has an interesting proposition: each chapter gives you advice on how you should live and lead your life. And each chapter to some extent directly contradicts all the others.
What's curious is that in listening to it, I often found myself agreeing to the rationale behind each of them!
I once thought that the fact our brains allow for two or more contradicting conclusions to live inside us at the same time is a huge evolutionary flaw holding our species back and allowing for mindless rationalization.
What I'm now reminded of, is how great this ability actually is. The fact that we can hold concurrent beliefs and practice all of them to some extent is incredible.
More incredible is how we can learn from seemingly opposing ideas and conclude something entirely new that conciliates our different personas into a new, enriched, one.
How To Live also puts a lot of my own personal dogmas to their maximum heuristics. Which makes for a fun internal dialogue: "hmm, putting it this way, my life choices don't seem THAT good", which in turn reminds that although I consider myself "a nomad" or "a creator" or "a risk taker", I'm also to some extent not a nomad, not a creator, not a risk taker. An interesting realization and cognitive itch to think about.
Spoiler: maybe balance, after all, is the way to live.
Go read the book. That's it.