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If you want to understand Jack Wighton you need to understand that two contradictory things can be true at the same time.
The laws of language dictate this cannot be so but rugby league knows better than that. Ahead of his South Sydney debut on Friday night how else can you explain Wighton, the sport's walking paradox?
He is one of the biggest stars in the NRL but spent most of his career at Canberra, which is low key to a fault and takes a furious pride in succeeding without stars.
He is one of just five players to win both a Dally M and a Clive Churchill Medal in the NRL era – the others are Andrew Johns, Billy Slater, Johnathan Thurston and Cooper Cronk — and he's one of the best and most decorated players in Raiders history but the club had an 11-2 record without him in the team over the past five years.
He is a whole-hearted competitor who can let matches drift by him, he is capable of brilliant displays of furious yet controlled athleticism, intensity and leadership and of losing his head so entirely that he bites someone in the very same game.
Jack Wighton is sublime and ridiculous in both senses of the word, he is inspiring and maddening, and he is all of these things at once. He is a great player, but not always a good one. He is easy to love but harder to like.
But that was Wighton as a Raider. As a Rabbitoh, life promises to be far simpler. Out in the centres he will be relieved of the burden of playmaking and can focus on the base components of his game – namely, his athleticism on both sides of the ball and his aggression as a defender.
He will do well as an individual at South Sydney, of that there seems little doubt. Wighton brings muscle and fire, which is just what the sluggish Rabbitohs need after an 0-2 start to the year where they've looked fragile out wide.
Wighton is a good answer to a big problem and he might give the whole team a bit of a shot in the arm – the 31-year-old has always been a popular teammate with an ability to lead by example and his stature in the game means he can demand more out of some of South Sydney's biggest names.
But you could be forgiven for thinking the Rabbitohs need more than a shot in the arm. The knives are out for anything cardinal and myrtle after a tough beginning to the year that feels connected to whatever enveloped the team as they crashed from top of the ladder to missing the finals last season.
Latrell Mitchell is copping heat for swearing in a radio interview. Lachlan Ilias has been dropped, a move that almost feels merciful given the struggles the halfback has endured recently.
Coach Jason Demetriou is wearing shots from former players on podcasts and whispers about his future will continue until results improve.
Because of Wighton's profile and resume and the Rabbitohs' current struggles, he will be cast as the saviour. The task of turning this ship around will be placed on his shoulders, rightly or wrongly.
It's easy to think Wighton has had to bear this weight before. There's a perception around his time with the Raiders that places Wighton as that same saviour, the only thing keeping Canberra competitive, a silver spoon on a paper plate.
Wighton was a great player with the Raiders, that is undeniable. But because Canberra is Canberra, his triumphs overshadowed his struggles more so than any other elite playmaker of his reputation or accomplishments.
The Raiders usually only filter into the wider rugby league discourse when they're winning, and when they have won over the past decade Wighton has been a huge part of it.
When they lose he was often a part of that as well – his error rate is a weakness in his game he's never quite been able to fix and he can drift through a match with tantalisingly little involvement – but Canberra losing doesn't fill back pages and column inches.
But that is all in the past now. When Souths lose, it's a story. When they lose like they have lately, it's a big one. And when high-profile teams lose, stars are tasked with saving them and Wighton is a star, a bright, shining, brilliant one.
It wasn't fair or accurate to cast him as a saviour in Canberra and it isn't fair or realistic to ask him to do it now. But he will be expected to do it, or at the very least lead the way, that much is certain.
It won't matter if rugby league is a team game and not an individual sport or that there are limits to which a centre, even a centre as good as Wighton, can impact a match.
It won't matter if the switch from Ilias to Dean Hawkins at halfback is arguably just as big as Wighton's own inclusion and it won't matter if, apart from 2019 and 2020, consistency has never been the easiest thing for Wighton to find or that he's playing a position he hasn't appeared at consistently in a decade — the lights will be brighter and the pressure will be on like never before.
In leaving the Raiders for the Rabbitohs, Wighton has traded what he was for what he might become and in the greatest paradox in a career full of them he must now fully transform into what so many have believed he always has been.
He has been great for a long time and now, on the team that was supposed to help him win a premiership, he must be greater again for that dream to survive.
That might seem contradictory, but when it comes to Wighton it's always been easy to have two things be true at the same time.