Being Right

"The greatest works of moral philosophy are emotional. They make an argument about how the world is and ought to be. There is a great mind at work in here. But where is the heart? Where are the guts?"

One of my pet peeves is the clusterfuck that humans create with double-sided doors. Being a fat fuck, I often find myself at the Wawa at 17th and Arch, which has two sets of double-sided doors next to each other, exponentially squaring the logjam. The rule of thumb should be that you stay to your right, both entering and exiting. Instead, people dash out whatever door is already open, even if someone is waiting on the other side of it, and people stand right in front of doors so they can walk out the opposite door that is being opened by someone coming in while they are going out. Human tendency to be inefficient is a constant minor frustration for me.

One morning a few weeks ago, I was on my way to grab a nutritious Sizzli breakfast. I entered into the foyer through the first set of double doors, staying to the right. At the second set of doors, a large old lady was ambling around in front of the door, ready to exit to her left (my right still). I slid to my left, and used that door, instead of waiting for her to do whatever she was going to do with the (wrong) door.

As I entered the Wawa proper, I heard a grumble from behind me: "Didn't even hold the door for me!" My temper immediately flared. "I could've held the other door for you, ma'am! I'm sorry I didn't hold the correct door for you!" And I stomped off toward the Sizzli rack.

Here's a fact: I was technically right, and she was technically wrong. She was exiting to her left, which created a logjam, one that I had to maneuver around.

Here's a fact: I could've just held the door open for her.

What I've been coming to terms with recently, through some pretty eye-opening self-reflection, is that "being right" is not the most important thing in the world. I have no idea if this is something that other people will sarcastically slap their foreheads over and say "well duh!" about, but I have a pathological need to be right. Those whom I can prove factually wrong are dismissed, are ridiculed, are met with verbal aggression. The world contains certain unalienable truths, and anyone who ignores or betrays these truths should lose their right to a say in the matter.

This is how I act, typically. Maybe not always as outwardly aggressive as I was against the left-door-user at Wawa, but definitely enough that I'm playing hypothetical arguments in my head as I sit in the middle room at two in the morning feeding a baby. Enough that I'm constantly depressed and distraught about how filled the world is with those whom I perceive as "idiots."

A subject that I've written on this blog about before is how my grandmother uses her Facebook page as a free-for-all conservative propaganda meme playground. Lots of it is wrong on a factual level, and the opinions expressed are formed from biased reporting and ignorant assumptions. She is wrong, in other words. Provably wrong.

And of course, I say so sometimes. I present data. I link to sources. I tear my hair out, to little response. In the past, I've used the excuse of: "My loving Mom Mom is expressing hateful rhetoric, and I can't square it, and it hurts me." I wanted to believe that excuse so bad that I really started to believe it. But here's what's actually happening: I just want to show that I am RIGHT.

I express my desire to be right. I know I am right, and she is wrong, and I want her to know it. Any backwoods trump jockey could pull the wool away from their eyes and see that I am right.

It never, ever makes me feel good. I write a screed, pinpointing exactly why I am right, and it makes me feel like SHIT. I feel like a shitty person all day. Even so, even after acknowledging many times that writing on my Mom Mom's Facebook wall never, ever makes me feel even an ounce of happiness, I still continue to visit her Facebook and look for conservative memes and write exactly why I think they are wrong, and then feel like complete and utter shit all day, all over again. This is an addiction. An addiction to being right.

What I am saying now is that I have come to recently understand the heart of the matter. Sometimes, when I am right, I can still be an asshole. Again—I don't know if this is totally old news to the people I surround myself with, maybe they've known I'm an asshole all along, but this is a new self-analysis for me. I am an asshole. When given the choice between proving that I'm right, and holding the goddamn door for a stranger, I tend to choose the former.

This realization is scary. I don't like it. I want to change.

For book club this month, we are reading recent Pulitzer Prize winner The Overstory. I'm not finished reading (I still have nine days, don't rush me!), but a quote from early on seems to be giving me a torchlight in the darkness here:

"There is no knowing for a fact. The only dependable things are humility and looking."

This quote has been burned into my brain recently, as I start to see what a shitty person I am. It seems to argue against the idea of thinking "I'm right," and more being a proponent of searching for more information, and searching for inter-personal understand. Making this quote a personal maxim would probably go a long way in improving how I feel inside, and how other people feel about me.

Strangers may be by and large inefficient in social understandings, but I need to help 'em out anyway. Hold the door for a goddamn stranger. Hold the wrong door for a stranger; it'll make me feel good regardless.

My grandmother has been bamboozled by the conservative media machine. So fucking what? She's still my grandmother. Why spend time making both her and me feel shitty? How about I try to reach out to her personally? Try to understand where she is coming from? She's not right, but she's a human being with feelings and thoughts. I need to be more humble in the face of my elders. I need to keep looking for a connection.

Just writing this blog post doesn't solve the fucking problem, I know that. I'm just writing it to make sure that you and I both know that I am aware of the problem's existence. I fucking want to be better.