I'm a huge fan of "Humans of New York" and have been for years. The people featured have stated some incredibly profound things and one that resonated so much for me came from a probate lawyer. She talked about how family members will waste tons of time, money, and resources to contest wills because most people "...would rather be right than be happy."
I've thought about this a lot since I first read it, which was back in 2016. Obviously I'm not a lawyer but I certainly experienced something similar. When my father died, several people close to me pushed me to take my step-siblings to court over the will. To me, that was just crazy because it would cost a fortune to create even more harsh feelings over a situation that was harsh to begin with. And, for what? To prove something? To get a few dollars out of it? I can't imagine the fleeting sense of triumph would make up for all of the negativity involved.
The need to be right can be so subtle that it pushes us to do things that are not in our best interest. Family members bicker and cut ties over different opinions, or worse, over different memories. "But they're WRONG!" people will say to justify their own behavior. And hey - maybe they are wrong. But so what? Do we really want to control other people's minds or memories? Unless we're talking about terrible things like abuse, chances are, the "wrong" opinions or memories are wrong according to our beliefs - which is to say that they're not wrong at all. They're just different.
We also sometimes stay in situations that aren't good for us but we can't admit that we were wrong about it. This can happen in relationships - we want to believe someone we care about is who we thought they were, not who they actually are - and it can happen at jobs. I think part of why I stayed at my last job as long as I did is because I thought the company was something different than what it was turning out to be. It was hard to admit that I was wrong about that, even when evidence piled up. Our want to be right supersedes our willingness to admit we're wrong.
And so, we do have to ask at some point: Would we rather be right, or would we rather be happy?
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