- The Earth is in a terrible state.
- Humanity is far better off than 300 years ago.
- It could be much better for everyone.
- Humanity has never been closer to its own destruction.
Four statements. Each one true.
Paradox. Contradiction. Polarities.
Most people recoil when faced with them. We want clarity, linearity, a “true” side to stand on. Yet life - especially now - is structured around irreconcilable tensions.
Leaders tell me they are “good at dealing with complexity.” And yet, again and again, I watch how hard it is for us - not just leaders, but all of us - to truly live with paradox. We prefer reduction over integration. We prefer immediate gratification over long-term survival. Climate change is perhaps the clearest mirror: we know what is required, but the short-term pull of comfort and profit outweighs the long-term possibility of continuity.
Our nervous systems are not wired for long horizons. We are exquisitely attuned to immediate threats, but astonishingly poor at imagining future collapse. Which is why we oscillate between denial and despair, instead of inhabiting the paradox fully: that things are both better and worse than ever before.
This inability is not just cognitive. It is emotional. It is somatic. It requires resilience to stand in paradox without splitting it into “either/or.” Resilience not as toughness, but as the capacity to hold multiple truths at once: grief and hope, urgency and patience, fear and possibility.
Because the world is not going to become simpler. The contradictions will deepen. The tensions will sharpen. And those who will be able to lead - not just formally, but as humans - are those who can breathe inside the paradox, resist the seduction of false certainty, and act with clarity while knowing the ground beneath them is unstable.
That, to me, is the most urgent leadership task of our time:
To cultivate the resilience to stay present with paradox - and to act from that unsettling place.