Paradox, Irony, Nemesis: The Passage to Understand Life and Literature

Abstract

What begins in love may end in hate
What begins in hate may end in love
Every dusk waits for a dawn; Every dawn leads to a dusk
What begins in anger ends in shame
Shame bring rage
Fear is the father of courage
Much learning does not teach understanding.

What do these sentences try to say? Are they ambiguous? Are they puzzling? Are they trying to bring any realization to man?
Statements of this kind are plenty. They try to teach something through contradictions. They are paradoxes. A paradox has two opposite features. It helps to know the importance of the other when we are with one feature. It always forces us to realize the other and makes us seek the other. For example When we experience the bitterness of hatred, we understand the bliss of love. If it were not for injustice, men would not know justice. When we suffer from the cruelty of suspicion, we long for the comfort of trust. In short, when we shuttle between these binary opposites in performing our roles, we pass through the process of learning and understanding life. It is the process of acquiring Common sense. Common sense is not so common. It is the process of acquiring knowledge through the application of mind with the co-ordination of the body. It is a fact as well as an experience. Human life, which is sandwiched between life and death, is a journey through these paradoxes. The realization of these paradoxes in life is aesthetically sweet. It becomes a passage in which the paradoxes stand on two sides and a man walks between them hopping and stopping.