What does it mean to be right?
Like the big history conundrum, where there are people who try to eliminate ‘history’ by changing textbooks and what is taught in history classes in schools, or by removing statues and monuments. Then, there are people who sit on a pedestal, claiming that history happened whether you like it or not, and that it cannot be changed or erased. A statement that is hard to argue with.
But know which is right, is even harder, because the main question becomes, who’s account of that history, is truly the correct, or true account of what really happened. Let’s for instance take the history of discovering new countries. Like the common modern notion of Christopher Columbus discovering America, or Willem Janszoon or James Cook discovering Australia. How can they discover a country or continent, if there are already humans living there, some for thousands of years already. Many early westerners often saw native humans of these newly ‘discovered’ lands as non-human, pre-human, unevolved or animals, as they did not have the technology, language or tools western civilizations had, so that may explain why they saw themselves as the first humans to discover these lands and continents. Are they wrong? Certainly in modern times most historians and people think so, however, how can someone be wrong, if their belief is formed from their understanding, from which belief or understand can someone else label them as wrong. Which is right and which is wrong?
This certainly complicates the question of history, and who or which side’s account of history is real. In fact, what you may very well believe today as real to you, is just and construct of your notions and experiences. I will not delve further into what is real and what is not (that will be in a future post, when I have learned more to be able to discuss that topic), but the point of this post, is just to highlight how many different intentions, interpretations, perceptions and realities there may be for each person in any situation.
This mainly, is why the practice of trying to always be right, even when you may very well be, is not only wrong, but it is a notion that needs to be let go of completely. It not only harms your own self, but also unnecessarily other people and your relationships with them. That does not mean you must always apologize and say they are right and you are wrong, but rather that you must stop communicating and thinking in this whole way of right and wrong, and see communication rather as sharing instead of a goal.
We often make others out to be wrong, so we can be right, and as selfish humans, we just love to be right. We need to realize that, if the other person does not regard themselves or what they did as wrong, then we realize there are a least two versions of their intention or interpretation. If there are two, there may be many more, depending on the point of view it is taken from or train of though it is analyzed through. This then showing that there may be no such thing as an absolute truth, and that what one person believes about another persons intentions, is more about what they themselves believe or their intentions are, than about what the other persons intentions are.
Stop jumping to conclusions, stop trying to analyze situations and relationships about what they mean or what is wrong and right. The only thing you can truly do, is know and analyze your own intentions, and love and enjoy another person or not. Aim for a higher, positive state of being. There four positive ways of being:
Integrity
Your word, yourself being whole and complete.
Authenticity
Consistently being and acting as you hold yourself out to be to yourself and to others.
Being Committed to Something Bigger than Oneself
Being selfless for the greater function and good of the universe, can be big or small, but purposed for greater than one self.
Being Cause in the Matter
You are the cause of everything and every situation in your life, never being the victim, a declaration.
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