Paradoxes

I said I'd be sharing more about my thoughts on reading The Happiness Project, and today I'm doing just that! One of the things that really stood out to me in the book, was Rubin's discussion of paradoxes.

Rubin says this, "[I] was very struck by an observation by physicist Niels Bohr: “There are trivial truths and great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.”  Though I haven't made up my mind how I feel about the concept in  general, I do think it relates very much to parenthood.

In, some ways being a mom is easier than you expect it to be, in that what I'm able to accomplish when it comes to a goal I set for my kids or my family is more than I ever thought possible.  But, on the same hand, it is, of course, the hardest thing I have ever done.  And, if there were ever truly a way to accurately express to someone the level of difficulty and hardship required in being a parent, no one would ever do it.

There is no way to explain the cost or the reward of being a mom.  I find that really isolating at times, because even when talking to another mom, her costs are different and so are her rewards.  There is no way to explain to someone how great their reward will be, because there is no way to know really what that reward will be.  And, maybe, that's why no one ever really tells you what it's like until you've been there.