Jacques Derrida wrote, when we speak of one thing, we invoke its opposite and what it is not. For example, to speak of a man or woman I speak of its opposite a woman or a man. Instead of understood as opposites, things, including words and ideas, complement each other, making them whole.
Albert Camus suggested “there is no love of life without despair of life.” Without one, we cannot have the other. Compassion means to share one’s love and suffering with each other. When we look deeper and are mindful of what we see, we recognize the how what is not readily evident is needed to make the whole of something.
This is not a new idea. Lao Tzu wrote this poem about what makes something useful is what complements it: the hub and spokes of a wheel; the hollow of a pot and the clay; and doors and windows and the room. Each profits from what it is not.
Often, there is paradox in understanding how things and people complement one another, making them whole.
Thirty spokes
meet in the hub.
Where the wheel isn’t
is where it’s useful
Hollowed out,
clay makes a pot.
Where the pot’s not
is where it’s useful.
Cut doors and windows
to make a room.
Where the room isn’t,
there’s room for you.
So the profit in what is
is in the use of what isn’t.
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About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope and its anticipatory relationship with the future, and hope as an essential element in learning.
Teacher as Transformer 
Also the use of the word “but.” My Auntie said never ask, “Can you do this.” Just say, “Will you do this.” I love things like this. It’s really changed the way I write and communicate when asking someone to do something. I love this “NOT.” This makes me think a lot! Wonderful share Ivon! 🙂
Thank you Michelle Marie. How we use our words makes an impact on others.
Beautifully penned… I loved Derrida´s ideas. It also reminds me of Hegel´s dialectics… We need the thesis and antithesis to reach the synthesis! 😀 (Heraclitus made some good points as to the unity of opposites too!. I will share a link on Twitter and tag you…. Happy new week! 🙂
I will share it here, because I just signed off Twitter (and had shared too many tweets over there 😉 ) https://aquileana.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/heraclitus-of-ephesus-the-doctrine-of-flux-and-the-unity-of-opposites/ Best wishes! 😀
Thank you. I went to the site. Heraclitus’ quote of stepping into the river is one of my favourites. It reminds me that I am changing along with the world. I used Derrida a bit in my dissertation and am finding me drawn more to him.
Yes, we live in a world of contrasts, polarities. I often ponder how I could appreciate nature’s beauty as much as I do, were it not for voggy days when the volcano sends us its own brand of smog. The cool of winter mists without the blistering hot jungle heat. Aloha.
And, between the poles are the in-betweens, which create the diversity of nature.
I sincerely believe we value things because we know impact of the opposites but this “NOT” is a hard poem. I will have to read it again to really get it.
It has a zen quality to it, like a koan.