You’re not difficult my friend. You just don’t need to agree. Because drawing outside the lines has its own particular joy and a life of nuance comes with a much better view.
When I was younger, my mother called me contrary on a regular basis. It was usually with a sigh and an eye roll, and came after I had disagreed, questioned or given her a (quite rational in my opinion) reason why I didn’t actually need to tidy my room. She saw it as a negative. In an ironically contrarian way, I disagree.
You see, I wasn’t an angry or badly behaved child. I just had the propensity to be argumentative when I couldn’t see the logic behind something. And that still holds true for me today.
The label landed and irritated me. I am a big believer in not labelling children because in doing so, you often put them in a box that contains them, and I think they should have the space to find their own words for themselves.
But yes, I remain contrary. And no, I won’t be changing anytime soon. Because the same person who notices all of the small details is also not comfortable with seeing a different way and not pursuing it. Contrary is good.
CONTRARY x CURIOSITY
The dictionary definition is mostly focused on political contrarians, such as writers or public figures who like to disagree with other people and express opinions that are unpopular.
But I am talking about the less wide reaching and more personal side of being contrary. The side that is too often described as stubborn, difficult or obstructive.
Over the years, I’ve realised that the word contrary rarely describes someone who enjoys disagreement. More often, it describes someone who isn’t willing to borrow their opinions. Someone who would rather arrive slowly at their own conclusion than quickly at someone else’s.
I think consensus has its comforts. After all, it asks very little of us. But the person who says I’m not convinced those are the only options, asks us to look again. The person who went the other way has seen something the crowd hasn’t. And the crowd finds it easier to call that person difficult than to engage with what they’ve noticed.
And so I no longer hear criticism, I hear curiosity. I think of someone who believes there might be another way of seeing things. Someone who has noticed and wants to look at all the paths, whether mainstream or not.
EMBRACING CONTRADICTION
I think being contrary is equally relatable to people who simply embrace contradiction.
In my own life, and I’m sure in the lives of many others, two things are always true at once. I am acutely aware that I live in a place where Spring is just about to bloom, but my heart is conditioned to see September as the beginning of Autumn. Both are true. I am passionate about literature and clothing. And just because I relish a cosy sweater, a warm drink and a patch of sunlight to read my book, doesn’t mean I can’t put on a beautifully cut suit and heels and win the room over in a meeting.
In my life there is order, but there is also spontaneity. I am productive and efficient, but dreaming is a key component of my existence as well.
And I’ve never understood why we insist on choosing between the identities we love. The woman who reads poetry can also be stylish. The runner can linger over pastries. The one who stays until the end of the party can still wake early enough to watch the sun rise.
The most interesting people I’ve encountered have always resisted being reduced to a single adjective.
Elegant and irreverent.
Thoughtful and playful.
Tailored and barefoot.
Disciplined and indulgent.
Bookish and sartorial.
The world often presents these as choices, but I suspect you can be all of this and more. And being contrary means not accepting tidy categories and labels. They’re easy for everyone to digest, but they’re rarely where the interesting people live.
Two things can be true at once. Perhaps several.
DIALECTICAL THINKING + THE ART OF NUANCE
This type of thinking is known as dialectical thinking, the ability to hold two apparently contradictory ideas simultaneously and find that both contain truth. It’s the kind of reasoning that develops in adulthood when life starts asking more complex questions than any single answer can satisfy. Research suggests it is associated with greater emotional resilience, reduced anxiety, more creative problem solving and a higher tolerance for the ambiguity that real life insists on delivering.
You can find a piece of music both joyful and heartbreaking, sometimes within the same four bars. You can be entirely certain about who you are and still find yourself surprised by your own reactions. You can hold a belief and its opposite with equal conviction, because you’ve given it enough thought to believe it. A thing can be true in one context and false in another. A decision can be simultaneously right and wrong depending on which part of the story you are standing in.
This is not sitting on the fence, the refusal to have a view at all. (Contrarians don’t often sit on the fence!) It’s just having a view large enough to contain more than one thing.
Interestingly, Eastern cultures have historically been more comfortable with this kind of thinking than Western cultures, which have tended towards the either-or. Western logic takes its roots from Aristotle, who insisted that something cannot be both true and false at the same time. But Eastern philosophical traditions have long held that contradiction is not a problem to be resolved but a reality to be inhabited. The contrarian, in this sense, is practising a very old form of wisdom that Western culture has been slowly catching up to.
In the context of Slightly, I chose the phrase “the art of nuance” to sum all of this up. The word nuance comes from the French, meaning a shade of colour. A subtle distinction. The kind of difference that only becomes visible when you are paying close enough attention to notice it. So nuance, by definition, belongs to the people who look carefully. Who can see that two apparently opposing ideas can both contain truth, depending on where you are standing.
Being contrary, paying attention to detail and the capacity for nuance are therefore inextricably linked.
The same instinct expressed in different directions. One turns towards thinking about the idea, the assumption, the conclusion everyone else has already reached. One turns towards the object, the fabric, the word on the page. And one notices the shade of colour that everyone else just called blue.
So in a way that my mother would probably not have agreed with, I am contrary.
Not to be difficult or stubborn or wilfully argumentative, but because I look beyond the obvious answer, pay attention to details, choose a life of nuance and believe wholeheartedly that two things can be true at once.
And I like the view from here.
If you enjoyed this story, you can find more on Slightly's Substack, Slightly Contrary
SLIGHTLY CONTRARY