For many of us it is very important to be "right".
In discussions on politics, religion, education, etc.etc.
No matter what the topic is, we like to be "right".
Scott Peck even goes as far as to say: "More than anything else,
we want to be right".
Right in the sense of holding the "right" opinion, view, truth and so on. Many discussions and debates end up in stand-off's because everybody is convinced that they are right and nobody is really willing to budge or negotiate. Now why is that?
Do we have something to lose if we have differing opinions? Is there not a reasonable chance of there being many different "rights"? Are the only options available; wrong or right? Though we speak of day and night, there is also twilight, dusk, high noon, late afternoon etc.
Can there then be; a bit wrong, a little right, a bit of wrong and right at the same time? In our language we often define something by using opposites: black and white, day and night, light and dark, high and low, truth and lies, love and hate, and soforth. However, does that necessarily mean there are no positions in between the opposites? (There are many hues of grey inbetween black and white for example.)
Let me suggest an example: A friend calls you and tells you he has bought a new car. He tells you the make and year, milage and so on, and lastly he tells you it's blue. Two days later he phones you to let you know he will be coming by to show you the new car. As you are waiting for him you see this deep purple sedan pull up. The driver is blowing his horn and minutes later out jumps your friend with a big smile on his face.
-"What do you think?" he says.
What are the chances that you will tell your friend that the car is purple? Will you reconsider your opinon on the colour and just go with blue?
Will you just ignore it all together because colour isen't important to you? Or will you correct your friend?
Or how about when someone misquotes a: songwriter, musician, painter, politician, statistics, references, history, science, etc.etc., do you find it hard not to correct them and tell them the right answer?
How often do we really scrutinise our own accuracy of information, do we update it regularily, do we really know where we got it from, and do we allow for memory lapses? With emotionally charged issues such as religion, child rearing and politics, are we willing to concede and be ok with others having totally different opinions and views?
Maybe being "right" is about feeling defined as an individual, marking one's territory so to speak, and when we are told we are wrong, it can be viewed/experienced as having our boundry interfered with, even in a way, threatend.
And then there is the issue of what people say and what we actually hear, often there can be rather large discrepancies between the two. What would happen if we just listened first, confirm that what someone said and what we heard are the same things, and for words of an ambigous nature we ask the other for their definintion, before we have a verdict of wrong or right, truth or untruth.
Maybe no verdict is necessary,
maybe we let children paint pink skies and purple trees,
maybe we entertain all possibilities
maybe we can use maybe more
and absolutes
less.
No comments:
Post a Comment