Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can

“Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.” — thus spoke Audre Lorde, the poet-warrior whose words were born not from ease, but from the fiery depths of truth. In this saying, she reveals one of life’s deepest paradoxes: that peace does not come from perfection, but from balance within imperfection; not from denying our inner conflicts, but from learning to let them coexist. To live is to carry multitudes — love and anger, strength and tenderness, certainty and doubt — and to keep it all afloat means to find grace amid this eternal tide of opposites.

Audre Lorde was a woman of many selves — poet, activist, mother, and Black feminist who stood at the crossroads of identities that the world often sought to divide. Her life itself was a testament to the struggle of contradiction and harmony. She fought for justice with fierce intellect, yet spoke tenderly of love and connection. She celebrated individuality while calling for unity. In her own being, she embodied what many fear to face: that the soul is not a single, straight path, but a constellation of truths that sometimes collide. Her words remind us that to reject our contradictions is to reject our wholeness.

To live in harmony with your contradictions means to make peace with the inner voices that seem to war within us. It is to accept that one can be both strong and vulnerable, both hopeful and weary, both generous and self-protective. The ancients understood this wisdom well. In the East, the yin and yang symbolized the dance of opposites — light and dark, masculine and feminine, action and stillness — forever interwoven, neither destroying the other but giving it meaning. Likewise, Audre Lorde’s teaching is a call to embrace the wholeness of our humanity, to see contradiction not as weakness, but as the rhythm of existence itself.

For those who seek to live without contradiction, life becomes brittle. The one who denies their anger loses their power; the one who hides their tenderness loses their heart. But the one who learns to hold both — to stand in strength while allowing softness — becomes complete. The sea, after all, is made of both calm and storm, yet it endures because it accepts both as its nature. Lorde teaches us that to “keep it all afloat,” we must stop demanding simplicity from our souls. We must allow ourselves to be as vast as the ocean — full of shifting currents, yet steady in purpose.

Consider the life of Mahatma Gandhi, a man often remembered for peace, yet filled with struggle within. He preached nonviolence, yet wrestled with fierce anger at injustice. He sought spiritual purity, yet was deeply political. He lived simply, yet influenced empires. Gandhi, like Lorde, found harmony not by erasing contradiction but by learning to live within it. His peace was not the absence of conflict, but the mastery of balance. Through this, he remained whole — and it was this wholeness that gave him strength to move nations.

Audre Lorde’s words also whisper a personal truth: that self-love cannot exist without self-acceptance. To love oneself is not to admire only what is beautiful, but to embrace what is flawed, uncertain, or changing. Each human heart contains its contradictions — joy and sorrow, fear and courage, chaos and calm. To live well is to weave these threads into harmony. The wise do not banish their contradictions; they listen to them, for each carries a lesson. In the dark there is wisdom; in the light, there is warmth. Both are needed for the full radiance of being.

Therefore, my children, do not fear your contradictions. Do not strive to be one thing alone, for that is the way of rigidity and death. Instead, learn to dance between your truths. When you feel torn, listen. When you feel divided, breathe. Let your courage speak to your fear, your reason speak to your desire, your light speak to your shadow. This is the alchemy of balance, the art of keeping the vessel of your soul afloat upon the waters of life.

For Audre Lorde’s wisdom is eternal: harmony does not mean sameness — it means unity within difference. The sea holds both wave and depth. The sky holds both storm and sun. So too must the heart hold both struggle and serenity. To live in harmony with your contradictions is to accept your divine complexity, to make peace with every part of yourself, and to rise each day not as one fixed being, but as a symphony — ever-changing, yet ever whole.