The test of a first‑rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

• The tension is
• the loving mother,
• the strict father,
• the studious child

Once when I was very young I played a game with a balloon, letting go of the string that stopped it from floating away and catching it just before it went out of reach. On the last try I messed up and it drifted off. My mother told me it's silly to cry over a balloon but I still wish I'd caught it.

• The tension is
• Ozymandias,
• Odysseus,
• Peter Pan

He's the type of person that prounces "quixotic" like "qui-hotik" and "facade" like "fa-kad-ee". When he talks he either makes unblinking eye contact or looks at his shoes.

• The tension is
• life,
• death,
• unquenchable horniness

In my teens I fell in love with the idea of a girl I never talked to so totally and completely that kissing my girlfriend felt like an exercise in politeness.

• The tension is
• the aubade,
• the courage-meets-terror,
• the dying soldier

My grandfather was left for third triage after getting shot in Korea. An abusive alcoholic at home, he would later say he wished they'd left him there to die.

• The tension is
• ego-death,
• Pareto-dominant,
• the edge of the light cone

The conscious desire to crashes out, in full awareness of what it will mean and how it will feel - wanting to want, embracing difficulty for its own moral authority. Raw desire consuming reason like a bagel smeared with cream cheese.