“I Know I am Right!”

How often have you heard this said? Indeed, how often have you used the same words yourself? And when you look back, were you always right? I doubt it very much. Sometimes yes but more often than you would expect you discover that, at best, you were only partly right. I wonder why this should be. After all we had the facts at our disposal and we felt very strongly at the time that our feelings as a result were right. Are there lessons to be learned from this? What might they be?

If you look back over such incidents in your own life, you will find I am sure that some other person did not agree with your assessment of the situation and became upset and maybe was hurt at your insistence that you were right. Was it worth it? I mean causing an upset to a friend or a loved one merely because you felt so strongly that your point of view was the right one. If your answer, with the benefit of hindsight, is “no it was not worth it,” then the lesson to be learned is opinion is not worth causing pain to another or falling out over. We can only show that lesson has been learned however when we are faced with similar circumstances but on this occasion we keep our own counsel or give advice in a more constructive way.

Secondly, were we in possession of all the facts? At the time I am sure we felt we were but again, hindsight may show differently. We were in possession of such facts as were known to us but at the time it is difficult or impossible to be sure they are all the relevant ones. There may well have been hidden factors or contributory actions by others about which we knew nothing; there may have been provocative action by third parties who thought they stood to gain by stirring things up. So many possibilities occur that any insistence that this or that view is the right one is fraught with the probability of error. Here we come to the nub of the matter. When we utter these words, we are rarely just giving our opinion but in reality expect the person concerned to follow our advice or where we are speaking about ourselves we are trying to justify a decision we may be in doubt about. The tone of voice that usually accompanies the words is evidence of this. It is one thing to give one’s honest opinion when asked for it but quite another to insist gratuitously when no such request has been made. I suspect the words are used more frequently in the latter than the former circumstances.

Next we must ask ourselves, who knows what is right? This applies in every field of human activity and the pages of history are filled with mistakes made by those who were convinced at the time of the rightness of their actions. I refer you to the story of the Chinese farmer and his son who ran their farm with the aid of a single horse and all the consequences that flowed as a result of the horse running away one day. I won’t repeat the entire story as I used it in an earlier blog. Remember, the answer of the farmer whenever anyone commiserated with him on his losses or congratulated him on his good fortune, was always the same? “Who knows what is right, who knows what is wrong?”

No, anytime we seek to influence the actions or thoughts of others by saying “I know I am right,” we must be extremely cautious, for in reality we are trying to exercise control are we not? Control over others is one of the most dangerous tendencies that human beings possess and one we all need to guard against. Many tyrannies have come into being due to the excessive exercise of this tendency. Next time you are in a position to give your opinion on the rightness or wrongness of another’s words, actions or intentions, try to give your opinion in a way that makes it completely clear the decision is theirs to take and you will not be upset if they ignore your point of view. Rather say something like, “Don’t you think it would be best to do this or that”, rather than “I know I am right!”