As kids, we were taught these words are opposites to each other:
- hot vs cold
- fast vs slow
- hard vs soft
- internal vs external
- physical vs mental
The above all make sense and they have been my default answers for many years. However, my martial arts training got me to re-think all the above over the years.
As you remember, your feel for temperature depends a lot on your starting point (read about contract bath) and speed is all relative (Read this article on speed). Liuhebafa and Hsing-I are both classified as internal style but we do punch fast and hard too. By now, you should have learnt that martial arts is not all just physical, even more importantly, you need to have a strong mental to really excel in it and suddenly you find that they are not really opposing concepts.
Exercise
Can you try play with some synonyms as well as opposites. Explain why common opposites are actually related in some special way or why something that look very similar on the outside is actually opposites?