Would You Rather Be Right or Be Happy

My peeps tell me my blog is nice, but it needs to be more controversial. Not so much sugar and spice, and less nice. I wonder why they say that? Who wants to read darkness? I can watch tv or drive in Atlanta traffic if I want negativity and frustration. I’ll not go there, not today anyway. Id like for this to be a nice, soft place for others to land, and a place for introspection and thought provoking. They may be right, but today I choose happy .

A dear friend and mentor has this pillow in her office, and on it is this phrase, “Would You Rather Be Right or Happy”. I try to ignore it, but it just keeps sitting there looking at me. Every time I walk in the office, there it is.
I wonder why that keeps happening? Have you ever noticed that the “thing” will not go away until it has taught us the lesson we need to know? I do believe that if you spot it, you got it. Most often the thing that we dislike in others, is for sure the thing we are most guilty of, and rather than change, we choose instead to point our finger where we spot it, even when we got it. Especially when we got it. I won’t fix it in me , so I’ll dislike it in you, because on me that very same thing looks better. In my mind.

Are you so stuck in your ways that you never compromise? And how is that working for you? Does it really feel so good to be right all of the time? Is that even possible when you really think about it? Maybe a closer look at those four fingers pointing back at you, when you are pointing the one at another? I don’t know just a thought.

What if we take the time to listen to that other person? The one on the other end of our pointing finger. What do they have to say? Why is it so difficult for us to hear? Did we spot it, cause we got it, and we simply will not look at ourselves, when it is so much easier to look at someone elses issues. A nice distraction from us.

If you think about it , that is really what a gossip is doing, they talk about everyone elses shortcomings and issues because this deflects from their own. Why talk about me negatively, when I can talk about you negatively, right? Your shortcomings are so much more than my own, better material to perk up others ears and make myself look better for a fleeting moment. Again, a distraction from me. Ah, how nice to be distracted from me, even if it is at the expense of you.

If you know me, you know I love a good debate, and I rarely engage if I am not likely to win. To be right. I really should have been a lawyer, but arguing comes so natural for me. Where is the growth in doing something that is not a challenge? Instead, I chose to be a Psychologist, which of course leaves no room for arguing. Rather, I have to look at that person who is so combative, and I have to wonder why? I have to wonder what made them this way? And at the end of the excavation, I usually find a pretty neat person hiding behind the anger. A person that likely had some bumps early in life, and was not heard. They did not have a voice in their home as a child, quite possibly . And when I see a broken little boy who was always dismissed as a child , fighting to be right, and be heard as an adult, then I am able to greet him with compassion.I am able to help him heal, and to give him the gift he did not receive early in life. I am able to hear him and let him be right. Just this once. And we both grow. And we both get to be happy. And that feels so good, better than being right, because we are all out there just bumping into each others wounds.