The Beauty of Contradiction: What Makes Us Human

“We want our heroes pure and our villains clear-cut. We want to love without doubt, to believe without question. Yet life doesn’t bend to those neat categories.”

I spoke to a friend about the recent events following the passing of Baba Raila Odinga. I explained to him how I felt the love, the pride, and also the resentment. His response has been eating me up ever since. He said, “You can’t praise someone for their courage and still be mad at their choices.”

At first, I wanted to argue. Because isn’t that what being human is, feeling everything all at once? Love and disappointment, pride and pain, admiration and confusion. His words made me realize how deeply we struggle with contradiction, how much we crave simplicity in a world that rarely offers it.

Baba’s death didn’t just mark the loss of a political giant; it reminded me of the beautiful, messy contradictions that make us human. When I first heard the news, there was love, genuine love, for his courage, his unrelenting fight for democracy, and the freedoms that shape our nation. But alongside that love sat resentment, quiet but firm. Resentment over some of the choices he made later in life, over the times he seemed to dine with the very people who once disrespected everything he fought for.

Across the country, reactions mirrored that same tension. Some mourned deeply, others hesitated, unsure of how to grieve someone who had both inspired and frustrated them. Some didn’t want to mourn him at all, until something in them softened later. It showed me just how much we crave simplicity when life rarely bends to it.

We want our heroes pure and our villains clear-cut. We want to love without doubt, to believe without question. Yet life doesn’t work that way. It asks us to accept that people, even the ones we look up to, can embody both light and shadow. Maybe contradiction isn’t a flaw; maybe it’s what gives life depth.

We’re taught to choose sides , you’re either loyal or you’ve betrayed, good or bad, right or wrong. But human beings aren’t built that way. We live in the in-betweens, proud yet disappointed, strong yet uncertain, loving yet guarded.

I think about how much energy we spend trying to silence one feeling to make room for another, forcing ourselves to decide which emotion is “right.” But what if both are? What if contradiction isn’t meant to be solved, but understood?

Every great story, every genuine moment of growth, springs from tension. The artist who paints from both pain and hope. The leader who stands firm yet doubts in private. The friend who loves fiercely but sometimes needs space. Contradiction doesn’t weaken us; it refines us. It’s the tug that keeps us real.

So maybe the discomfort we feel when our emotions don’t align is actually a sign of life, proof that we’re thinking, evolving, feeling deeply. In the same way, many of us wrestled with how to remember Baba, both proud of his courage and frustrated by his choices, is the same way we wrestle with ourselves every day.

We can love and question at the same time. We can mourn and critique. We can hold gratitude and grief in the same breath and still mean both.

That’s the beauty of contradiction. It’s not confusion; it’s complexity. It’s what makes art powerful, love real, and growth possible. So maybe the goal isn’t to silence the tension, but to honor it, to let it remind us that we’re not broken for feeling two things at once. We’re simply human.

So maybe my friend was partly right. Maybe you can’t praise someone for their courage and still be mad at their choices. But maybe you can love them because of that contradiction, because they mirror back to us the complexity we try so hard to hide. Maybe I was too harsh to judge him, too eager to separate the good from the flawed, forgetting that both can coexist in the same person, because that’s the whole point of being human.

Rest in peace, Agwambo🕊🕊. You will be remembered not just for the battles you fought, but for the courage that carried them. You stood at the heart of a nation’s story , flawed, yes, but fiercely human. You believed in the power of voices, in democracy, in the promise that justice could prevail. And even when your path stirred questions, your conviction never wavered. You reminded us that true legacy isn’t perfection; it’s persistence, faith, and the fire to keep dreaming long after others give up. May your spirit rest, knowing you shaped generations with the strength of your will and the depth of your heart.