Stuck in the Right: The Curse of Being Correct

Imagine the following:

A mother laments her relationship with her adult son.  “I am constantly thinking of my son.  I cook and bring over food.  I gave him the down payment for his first mortgage. I babysit my grand daughter.  But my son speaks to me with disdain. He doesn’t call.”  Her voice quivers and her cheeks are streaked with tears.  “He is an ungrateful child. What did I do to deserve this?”  The emotions overtake her.  A parent’s love often lives in obscurity and the most heroic sacrifice appears mundane.  By some mysterious law of the cosmos, children do not easily grasp the forces that sponsor their flourishing.  A parents’ devotion is like the beneficence of air, vital to life but nearly always taken for granted.  However, the mother’s difficulty stems precisely from the validity of her experience, the accuracy of her assessment produces a painful predicament[1].

Our emotions arise in response to life situations; each valence carries weight and substance.  That one can feel lonely and despondent, for example, is a recognition that can be safely taken as fact.  The inner life is a facet of our existence; Insofar as our emotions are felt, we apprehend them as real and incontrovertible.  Often, our feelings are not only valid but also justified.  A mother’s disappointment in the face of a son’s neglect is entirely appropriate.  In this sense, she is “right” to feel sad.  However, despite the validity of our emotions, they often confine us to a prison of inner suffering.

First, a word on definition.  I shall limit my use of “right” to two meanings: one, that which is accurate, veracious, correct and true, as in the forecasters were right about the arrival of rain; two, that which is legitimate and justified, as in she was right to demand an increase in salary. In both cases, to be right is to have valid claim, to hold warrant, to have standing.

The problem is not that we are not “right” in our perceptions, nor that we are unjustified in our positions, but that we are stuck in them.  We can be right about a host of things and thus dig ourselves into a deep hole. Lucid insights are as much trouble as they are treasure  ¾ they explicate and intoxicate at the same time.  There is gravity in the precise diagnosis of a situation.  Insight is empowering, and we are drawn to veracity’s orbit.  To be in the right is to feel the density of one’s own substance, to stoke the flames of ego’s fire.  Yet, this rightness of perception can lay hold of our faculties; we cleave to them despite the suffering entailed by our adherence.  Life often requires more fluidity and flexibility than what is afforded by my claim to being right.  So long as “rightness” trumps all other sensibilities, there is little possibility of movement.

A devoted employee is passed over for promotion[2].  “I’ve given ten years to this company, and yet the job goes to a junior who hasn’t contributed to the company’s growth like I have.” The grievance is as bitter as it is legitimate.  At the same time, the grievance is a snare that traps its subject.  Injustice fuels rage and resentment, which erect rigid walls that become an imposing fortress.  The confined subject spins endlessly in cycles of negativity — he prefers the prison of righteous indignation over the spaciousness of the blue sky. He is right to feel angry, but he is also stuck.

Sometimes, we land upon an observation that clarifies our situation while reducing our options at the same time.  For example, I often find myself circling back to the same trap with regards to the ecological crisis.  On the one hand, we cannot induce widespread change by inflicting guilt on others, infringing on their freedom through coercive measures, thus provoking defense mechanisms that counteract our efforts.  On the other, without swift and drastic action on a massive scale, we are all doomed to catastrophe.  Such prognostication writes its own conundrum. The diagnosis induces the illness.  It’s not that the observation is off-the mark, but that it lands us in despair, a space of breathless intractability.  The elucidation provided by a “right” view can both empower and disempower at the same time.  “Rightness” becomes the very hurtle that thwart progress.

If we find ourselves mired in rightness, here are two proposals to extricate ourselves from its grip: humour and paradox.  Because rightness is by definition accurate and correct, we do not escape the snare by opting for the false and spurious.  The trouble with rightness lies not in its veracity but its viscosity.  We unstick ourselves from rightness by apprehending what is “right” in the light of ironic humour, which leaves the proposition intact while undermining its stranglehold on agency.  Humour renders absurd what is meant in earnest.  The literal meaning holds, but the interpretation is set free.  Returning to the aforementioned example — we cannot force people to change, but if we do not change then we are doomed — the conundrum’s potency dissipates when we laugh in the face of absurdity.  Here, humour is a transgressive act that subverts the shock of meaning — the text remains the same but the message is altered through a willful registration.  The presupposed attitudinal backdrop that lends the text its salience suddenly shifts, thus reconstituting the interpretive outcome.  The psychic and spiritual problem posed by the statement rests in part on the intelligence that apprehends the problem, that makes transparent its artifice.  In laughing at how right we are, we are bigger than our rightness; we are too slippery to be glued to its grip.  Willful and cunning humour is defiance and transcendence both.

In addition to humour, paradox provides a way to neutralize the paralysis of being in the right.  Much of the deeper truths about the world exist in paradox.  For example, there is a Hasidic saying that illustrates precisely the incisiveness of paradox: we each wear a coat with two pockets.  One pocket is filled with gold nuggets, the other with dust.  Every time we reach into these pockets, we are reminded of what we are.  Herein lies the paradox: each human life is as precious as gold and as insignificant as dust.  A paradox is contradiction in appearance only, for its opposing components form a completeness greater than its parts.  Such is the complexity of a world that eludes full understanding, despite our faltering attempts at conceptualization within the limits of our ape cognition.  The further we inquire into one truth, the more its obverse counterpart rises into view, thus challenging our hold on any one proposition with absolute certainty.  If we find ourselves stuck in the right, we discover an antidote in restating our rightness in the form of paradox: the world is both flawed and perfect; I am both broken and pristine; we must all do something and nothing more needs to be done; the situation is unfair and fairness is irrelevant.  Contradiction is the stasis of meaning, an irreconcilable state of understanding. We overcome the stasis of meaning by entering into contradiction itself.  Paradox redeems contradiction through contradiction, achieves the triumph of text over text.  In embracing and living the paradox, the prison fortress stands, but we are free to walk through and out of it.

The sway of rightness is often an affliction.  Many people would rather be right than happy.  They prefer to be right even when doing so harms those they love, or prevents them from skillfully navigating the challenges of life.  With maturity, we can see that rightness neither encompasses the whole of our capacity, nor define the totality of our aims.  The astuteness of our views, the accuracy of our perception must return to their place beside other propensities: kindness, skillfulness, compassion, patience, forbearance, magnanimity, and love.  In response to the absurd, we laugh, chuckle, guffaw.   In the teeth of contradiction, we return to completeness afforded by paradox.  In so doing, we leave rightness intact while extricating ourselves from its paralyzing grip.     

[1] This character is entirely fictional, but her plight is common among many who have experienced the bittersweetness of parenthood.

[2] This character is also fictional.

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