On Being Right... Or Not

Posted by PeterAtLarge

You'll forgive me, Bush, if I make another brief aside to talk to my passionate friend, whose comment on my entry yesterday I read with much interest. My response, though, is addressed as much to you, Bush, as to my reader. It's this: that it's not always about being right. It's not about having the right definitions, the right data, the right historical facts, the right side of an argument. It's not about moral rectitude. What I'm talking about is just as important as all that. I'm talking about the ability to see around the corners of my rightness, to see the cracks in its surface, to take a look at it from the flip side. It's about having the humility and the humor to take my own rightness with that proverbial pinch of salt and to realize that others, too, might just possibly have some rightness on their side even--no, especially--when I'm convinced that they're wrong. When I act or argue from the advance knowledge that I'm right, I speak out of prejudice: I pre-judge. So it's about tone. It's as much about the way I try to tell you what I mean as the rightness of my words. To take a Buddhist approach, it's about not being "attached" to my rightness. It's a matter of reminding myself, always, to have a little com- with the passion.

That's the sermon for the day, Bush. Take it with a pinch of salt. I could be wrong. But of course I don't think so.