“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…”

— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Since my freshman year of high school, when I first read A Tale of Two Cities, I have been captivated by two things: the French Revolution and the concept of paradoxes.

For the last 20 years, my focus has shifted to another revolution: Communication. I’ve studied how people connect, and more often, how they fail to. What I’ve discovered is that communication itself is full of paradoxes:

• We talk to connect, yet our words create distance.
• We prepare what to say next, but miss what is being said now.
• We assume shared meaning because words are shared, yet context is always personal.

These contradictions aren’t flaws in communication—they are the very heart of it. To understand them is to understand why conversations break down, why relationships strain, and why leadership and influence succeed or fail.

CommunicationParadox.com is a collection of these insights—a place where paradoxes are not problems to solve but patterns to recognize. Each article unpacks one paradox, explores where it shows up in daily life, and offers practical ways to shift from confusion to clarity.

This is both a collection and a journey. A journey toward listening more deeply, speaking more intentionally, and bridging the gaps that paradox so often exposes.

Because when we learn to see the hidden paradoxes in our conversations, we learn to transform the way we connect.