I have always had this argument with my father. For years, it has always been this:
Father: There is only one way to live life, and that's that!
Me: No, there is only one way to live life, and that is to recognise that there are many ways to live life. And that's that!
As you can see, righteousness and stubbornness runs in the family.
We love being right, and proving other people wrong. It has been the cornerstone of my existence. It was the source of a lot of my successes as well as failures.
I am smart enough to be right, or to manipulate events and circumstances to be right. Oh yes, my friends, I can be quite the devious git.
Being right, though, has never made me happy. To be fair, it has never made me sad either.
It just exhausts me sometimes. I am tired of being right all the time. And that is no excuse for being wrong. Nope.
It's just that I believe that the key to finding true peace and happiness also lies in letting go of the illusion of being either right or wrong.
In the end, does it really matter? If I'm a doctor or a minister or a soldier, then yes, maybe my decisions - the right or wrongness of it - can determine whether some people live or die.
But I'm just a writer. What do I know? How effectual can I be?
And stripped away from my identification with my job, my function, do I really need to be right at all times of the day?
Essentially, the concept of right and wrong are egoic in nature. As well as superiority or inferiority. They are the fuel for feeling good or bad about yourself, which is also an illusion from the devious mind.
True happiness, I find, comes from only acceptance and letting go of many things, including this notion of right and wrong.
But don't take my word for it. I could be WRONG.
