The Unity of Opposites - or - Symmetry Rules, But it Hurts so Good

"Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel;
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel."

I think we all remember these contrary twins who battle each other out of their similarities. Alan Watts in “The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are” writes that:
“. . . for thousands of years human history has been a magnificently futile conflict,a wonderfully staged panorama of triumphs and tragedies based on the resolute taboo against admitting that black goes with white. . . . As when Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle, the essential trick of The Game of Black and White is a most tacit conspiracy for the partners to conceal their unity, and to look as different as possible. It is like a stage fight so well acted that the audience is willing to believe that it is a real fight. Hidden beneath their explicit differences is the implicit unity of what Vedanta calls the Self, the oneness-without-a-second, the what there is and the all that there is which conceals itself in the form of you.”

This sure sounds a lot to Big Frank like WHAT IT IS.

The Chinese Zen Poet Shitou Xiqian captures this in his poem:
The Harmony of Difference and Sameness

In the light there is darkness,
but don't take it as darkness;
In the dark there is light,
but don't see it as light.
Light and dark oppose one another
like the front and back foot in walking.
Each of the myriad things has its merit,
expressed according to function and place.
Phenomena exist; box and lid fit;
principle responds; arrow points meet.
Hearing the words, understand the meaning;
don't set up standards of your own.
If you don't understand the Way right before you,
how will you know the path as you walk?
Progress is not a matter of far or near,
but if you are confused, mountains and rivers block your way.
I respectfully urge you who study the mystery,
do not pass your days and nights in vain.

Friedrich Nietzsche:

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
— Beyond Good and Evil

Robert Frost viewed poetry itself as an expression of the unity of opposites, as perhaps best exemplified in the following poem.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

And now we have come full circle for Big Frank points out that it is worthwhile remembering that after a somewhat longish conversation with the contrary Tweedledee and Tweedledum Alice had the following thought: "I wish the monstrous crow would come!"