One of the inspiring lessons I have learned in the last few years is about being right.  To start this post I want to re-post a little about what I said about being right a couple of years ago.

Let Others Be “Right” Most of the Time

From: Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson

Richard Carlson makes the statement

“Do I want to be ‘right’ — or do I want to be happy?” Many times, the two are mutually exclusive

This is certainly a very hard lesson for some of us to learn. But we must realize as Mr. Carlson states that Being right, defending our positions, takes an enormous amount of energy. Since to the person you are trying to prove you are right to most often translates that to they are wrong.

I am getting pretty good at practicing personal form of not having to be right all the time. It does make life more peaceful. There is also a group aspect of being right that is very troubling in the world. Our insistence on being right has gotten mankind into serious trouble throughout our history in several different areas.

Religion

Different religious groups having to be “right”  has caused so much harm in this world.  I am convinced that no one on this earth can possibly know the heart of God.  As he said himself “I am” and to me that infers that he is just not totally, or even remotely knowable by us, any of us.

There have been so many groups of religious people who insist that they are the ones who have it “right” about God. Their insistence on being right has caused them to deem anyone who disagrees with them heretics. Some then have tried to annihilate those “who have it wrong”. They burned their writings and oftentimes the people themselves. Even in today’s time being “right” has caused so many Christian groups to focus on exclusion rather than as Jesus taught us inclusion. We have separated ourselves into over 39,000 different versions of God by insisting that we have it “right”.

And then sadly there is Al Qaeda. This is a rather small group of muslims who insist that their version of God is the only right one. They are a radical right group who rejects the more moderate versions of their own faith group. They call the U.S. the evil satan and are vowed to destroy it along with our heretic  beliefs and practices. We all know how much pain and suffering this very small group has caused because the believe that they are the ones who have it “right”.

Politics

Politics today has been harmed by those who insist that they are the only ones who have it right. It used to be that everyone, or at least most everyone, was willing to listen and often compromise with each others to accomplish the greater good. But nowadays there are just too many who are convinced that they are “right” and everyone else just has it wrong. They have come to see their opposition as evil and therefore hate them.

Being right just takes too much energy and drains happiness from our lives. When we all come to the realization that no one holds the claim to be absolutely right about anything then some degree of happiness will return to us.