An Endless War for the Illusion of Being Right

When we realise we’ve done a bad thing, something uneasy begins to stir. A feeling we spend our lives trying to resist.

That’s why we are always restless. We constantly fight the battle of wanting to be right.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the tags we assign to everything, and the same question keeps popping into my mind:
What is the point that everyone is constantly trying to make?

For centuries, we’ve abused the very labels we invented. For what? To surround ourselves with endless conflicts?

I never cared about being right or wrong. For me, I always knew I was right, but I never thought that made the other person wrong.

During my bachelor’s, my best friend lived by her own strict moral code that she expected everyone to live by. She was the kind of person who made you feel chosen, simply because she cared to love you. Before anyone else, I was first victimised by her love bombing. She fed me her love at all the right times. She showed up in all the right ways. I was enchanted. So, she knew what withdrawal could do.

As with all love bombing, what follows is always the second act: gaslighting. The cruellest two-act play one can ever stage.

Just like any other addict, every time I missed a dose, an existential crisis came my way.

I remember one specific day during finals, in front of the library. She gave me a single look. A hateful, piercing stare that shattered me into pieces, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. In reality, you don’t really need to. That is the unspoken contract, that love and cruelty can coexist in the same room.

The entire course of my life changed when I heard what her problem was. It wasn’t any wrongdoing. I just got along with everyone. I was neither wrong nor right. I was neutral. Political. She believed I was a hypocrite who agreed with whoever was speaking. But I never agreed. I just didn’t disagree either.

To listen without rejecting isn’t to agree. It is to recognise the value in their truth while not abandoning your own. No idea is inherently better than any other.

For them, it was their truth.
For me, mine was mine.

One of the biggest learnings of growing up with two older sisters who constantly fought taught me that. With my arms pulled from both sides, cast as the younger sibling expected to take a side where none felt wrong, I internalised a truth everyone knows but quietly refuses to believe.

Every story has two sides. No one is acting badly on their terms, but to come to that realisation, you have to listen to their terms first.

That is what I did. I listened. That is why arguing has always seemed pointless to me when we can simply just communicate.

However, in the 21st century, humility is seen as a weakness. I partly blame technology for that.

In today’s society, if you reveal yourself, you give away power.

That is because our egos are familiarised with the cruelty humankind is capable of when control is no longer in our hands.

Recently, I took a trip with someone. Someone I never thought could be aggressive, until I told him how I truly felt. I didn’t want to argue. I didn’t want to be right. I just wanted him to understand.

No one ever cares to understand.

When we don’t want to feel bad about ourselves, we blame the other person. It must be them who did wrong.
In the end, it’s not really about being right.
It’s about avoiding the appearance of being wrong.
It was never about clarity or understanding.
We’d rather lose the truth than let them see they were right.