There is a Swedish saying: "Don't mix apples and pears."

It has nothing to do with fruit salads.

Rather, it reminds us that things which may look similar are not always the same. We understand them better when we allow each one to be itself.

I sometimes wonder whether this applies to our thinking as well.

Many of the questions we wrestle with become confusing because we unknowingly mix different kinds of ideas. We compare things that perhaps were never meant to be compared in the first place.

Perhaps some apparent paradoxes are not paradoxes at all.

Perhaps we simply mixed the apples and the pears.