Russian. The duality of thinking is actually quite an easy everyday thing. It's when you mentally evaluate something or someone and find that s/he or it has both positive and negative attributes. For example, "he is smart but dishonest" or "she is beautiful but dumb" or "driving is fun but dangerous."

When those attributes are more complex and to express them one needs an entire sentence, then English has a problem. You cannot or rather should not start a sentence with "but". There is, of course, such a thing as "however". But (see I am starting a sentence with "but"), but "however" is too strong, too much of a brutal force. There is no (or at least I don't know of) a word or an expression in English to state that the first entity is slightly on the positive and the second is slightly on the negative. Maybe "at the same time"

The ocean was of a beautiful aquamarine color and I felt like swimming. At the same time/However I had to be careful because the waves were huge. The first sentence evaluates a situation in a positive light while the second evaluates it in a negative. They are in opposition to each other. "At the same time" underplays this opposition while "however" overplays it.

Moreover in your writing, I never even seen such constructions - when opposition model is used, when you are taking a step forward and then a step backward. Your narrative - is a straight line without any backpedaling. That's what I observe in a speech of native speakers. "But" maybe I am wrong and there is a way to express this properly. )))