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"I don't try to be right, I choose to be happy" ... wait, what?
With no disrespect intended to RIc or any readers with opposing views, I take issue with the quote I pinpointed. The pursuit of happiness is a great thing and all, but I don't think it should actually take precedence over being right.
Now I know there's a fine line between "being right" and "doing the right thing". After all someone who tries to "be right" on every minute issue can get very annoying fast ( -- ever met someone who insists on correcting grammar when it's clear what's being said? case in point).
But on larger issues I would like to suggest that proving that you are in fact right constitutes doing the right thing.
eg. Galileo would've been a lot happier if he just agreed the earth was flat and stopped insisting he was right -- but aren't we happy he was stubborn?
more recent eg. Fighting tolerance / discrimination. Though intrinsically rewarding, most of us can live an easier, happier life by turning a cold shoulder. But who would argue that this is good advice?
I don't mean to pick apart Ric's quote and use it out of context. All I would like to show is that what may help you live on a micro level may actually promote apathy on a macro level. I'm only twenty though, so I'm still at the idealistic age where I think some hard work can save the world. But isn't that what TED's all about? :)
Celso Biagioni
echo wavesounder
Tara Liloia
Me: I lent you my SD card, can I have it back, please?
Husband: No, I gave that back to you.
Me: I don't think so. I remember lending it to you on our trip. Can you look for it?
Husband: (Showing me the empty SD slot in his laptop) See? It isn't here. I don't have it. I gave it back to you.
***
Here, I was right. I lent him the card, he didn't return it. I could have pursued the issue and we would have fought. I didn't. By saying he returned the card, my husband is indicating that he has no idea where it actually is. Getting him to admit that he lost the card doesn't bring it back. I bought a new SD card. I also made a mental note to never lend my husband an SD card with five weeks worth of vacation photos on it ever again.
I was right, but I chose to be happy instead.
This is exactly the daily trivial stuff that comprises the bickering of a typical marriage. When you let some of it go, the relationship gets mired down much less frequently. This is what I take Ric to mean.
Abelardo de la Torre
It all resumes in " THE EXACT ISUE THAT ITS ABSOLUTLY RIGHT FOR YOU COULD NOT BE RIGHT FOR ME AND VICEVERSA"
echo wavesounder
I wish you will try some Tibetan meditation which will helps you to find your answer .
Abhiram Lohit 10+
A guy fights/argues/demonstrates to prove he is right because he will gain respect (= look cool) in public, but he is never the practitioner of whatever that right implies. So when it comes to himself, he still does what makes him happy regardless of the degree of "right" in what he does.
Maya Shahri
in this cases, to insist that you are right, is taking your happiness away from you and people you care about and it shows that you are far from being a mature person. I think this is what he meant because he said he had not been fighting with his wife. human fights are most of the time not about facts (e.g. if earth is flat) they are about preferences (e.g. let's go see that romantic comedy).
Ehis Odijie 10+
John Czafit
More interesting is your understanding of what it means to be right. Being right means you won an argument, it doesnt mean that theres some universal law (truth?) that you are in alignment with. Doing the right thing means doing what you understand is moral, it is an opinion and just like everything it will change in time. In fact there is no hair thin line between these two things, they are completely different animals. If you believe that there are universal laws (gods rules if you will) then I beg you to inspect your beliefs further. Are there situations where you must break a law to be in accord with another? Of course there are. Where do these laws come from? From the mind. However you look at it, the terms used to describe any action are infinitely complex, they can and will be described differently by every person. So in fact these ideas are in your head, sure they might have come from a book (holy or not) and therefore constructed by another person (or directly from a god, which we cant prove). Either way our own understanding is not the same as the original constructors. Physical laws seem to be bent and broken in certain situations like the big bang, and even seemingly simple things such as golf balls are made up of millions of tiny particles which we can barely describe and have no real understand of. Even numbers themselves are mental constructs, 1 apple in reality is not one thing at all, nor do we know if there's any elementary particles that make an apple up, infinite in function and in ways to describe it.
As far as I can tell there is a world that can be described, these descriptions (or truths) are NOT reality itself, if even a part of the same reality. Truth is a measure, and maybe never absolute.
Time....
Tomas Rodriguez
Don Robinson
Mogens Skjold
At least that's what I got out of it :)
Lewis Overton
Would he? After all, he DIDN'T prove to the church that he was right. He proved that his conviction not to support a lie was stronger than his desire to live in a world where one must lie to live.
Meher Like Spring Rabbit 10+
charles rose
Dave Wilson
Facts are things that just ARE. Like, I woke up this morning, or there is a cup of water on the table, or the earth does revolve around the sun. All of these involve some type of observation, and humans being fallible are known for making poor observations from time to time. But no matter who is observing, the fact remains in and of itself, true. Even if no one ever observes it.
Righteousness comes in when we try to take what we consider to be fact as true and argue for that. The important part here is the 'argue'. There are many ways to present ideas, thoughts, observations, derived proofs and such without having to resort to righteousness. Righteousness is more of an emotional state, or way of being rather than having anything to do with stating the facts. It is our own sense of righteousness that Ric was referring to when he was talking about being happy instead of being right.
You CAN be happy and still work for the better good. You will also find you will have an easier time if you aren't trying to impose your righteousness on others. We can have civilized discourse, like we are doing here, present ideas and suggestions, bring forth the facts and temper our judgments. Imposition of our beliefs on others through our righteousness is where war comes from, especially when you consider extreme religious groups.
You can always impose your righteousness on others, but you cannot impose happiness on them. What we think will make others happy, is often not the case at all.
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
michael green
Debra Smith 200+
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
June Tong
If my friend who does not have a good singing voice thinks she does, is there love in telling her that she does not, and thus ruining her enjoyment of karaoke? On the other hand, when she decides to audition for American Idol, is there love in supporting her delusion, and allowing her to be humiliated on national television by Simon Cowell? If my (hypothetical) adopted son was given up by his now-deceased biological mother because she simply didn't want him, should I tell him that, rather than let him think she gave him up because she was unable to support him and wanted a better life for him?
I think what is "right" is situational, and unrelated to "the truth".
John Ross
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Michelle Goodwin
Ana Ferrari
I find that activism for whatever cause wen not base on what is possible outside of blame, ends up creating the same thing that they are "fighting" against.
“You don’t have to feel bad to act kindly. Love doesn’t stand by, it moves with the speed of clarity.” - Byron Katie
Kristofer Björnson 10+
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/paul_collier_shares_4_ways_to_help_the_bottom_billion.html
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Daniel Vineberg 10+
"Rightness" is such a loaded term that it is easy to equivocate someone's saying that they are right to saying that everyone else is wrong. A few commenters have pointed to this as a flaw of trying to be right. But this isn't necessarily what I'm saying. Rather, it's the ability to hold onto your own sense of "rightness" while co-existing with others who have their own believes of what's right that should be strived for. If you're living under someone else's notion of what's right (legally, morally, spiritually, etc..) then I don't think you can truly choose to be happy, but only chose to conform.
On the other hand, I believe there are certain issues where right and wrong can and must be determined. It *had* to be determined for example that women have the right to vote. In countries where they still do not, we cannot simply force this belief on them, but we are selling humanity short if we passively accept such forms of oppression in the name of tolerance.
( The first TED talk I ever watched was by Sam Harris, who does a great job of talking about the implications of judging right and wrong:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html )
In sum, I agree with the speaker on the importance of not sweating who's right in the small things. But in the larger sense, the often tiresome battle for rightness is well worth having.
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Anjan Ghosh
The trick here is to understand what is right. One can decide right and wrong retrospectively but how do you decide that prospectively is the question. Even if we take the example of Galileo, do we know exactly what changed if the belief of people changed that earth was round and not flat. It mattered to a handful of scientist in their quest but what for a commoner was that important?
So, it is critical to understand what does 'right' mean? Isnt it too relative? Does it not change over time & space. So what he says is to value and enjoy what is more important to keep human relations going. The bonding getting stronger and we accomodating more imperfections and individuals
Kristofer Björnson 10+
Tim blackburn 30+
— Terence McKenna
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Tim blackburn 30+
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Wes Bennett 10+
One of the greatest things I've learned about "being right" in my past 40 years, came partly from my own near death experience (at 20yo), and partly from a 20 year creative career in photography, design & advertising. Briefly summarized, the lesson is "everything that's not based on perspective, is closer to being the truth.
Nearly everything we experience emotionally, as well as through our physical senses can vary greatly from person to person. Something as simple as tickling someone can result in giggling & laughter, but it can also be truly painful for another person.
In my late 20's, while calibrating my monitor to match with photos coming from my inkjet printer - I was getting frustrated and needed a better perspective on how to color match. So I covered my right eye & tried to determine whether I needed more cyan, or more magenta to get a proper color balance. Then I tried again with my left eye covered. And I discovered a 5%-7% difference in color perception between my own two eyes. It seemed insignificant at first, but then I realized - if my right and left eye can't agree on what's magenta or what's cyan - how many different things do we all perceive in different ways? I laughed when I thought of my left eye & my right eye...arguing over color schemes.
As human beings, we have the gift of empathy and understanding another person's pain...or happiness. When we put "ourselves in someone else"s shoes" or "try seeing it their way", we often find both sides had valid points - based on their perspective & the information they had to process what they experienced.
What's right for me, may be completely wrong for someone else. By respecting that & looking for similarities in our experiences, we gain & grow iindividually and as a race. Or we fight, start wars & fight over who's "right".
History shows us - peace & happiness result from understanding - not from fighting over who's "right".
Bonnie Hardin
Benjamin Gell
We should pick our battles wisely. That's the answer.
We are sometimes faced with a choice (this is from John Bradshaw): do we want to be right or do we want to be close (to someone). Lets make that choice conciously. As the annoying grammarian is probably not doing.
By the way, I'm not religious, but this reminds me of a quote from Jesus: "I bring not peace, but a sword." This seeming contradiction from a great champion of peace is about rocking the boat when what's right is important enough. But he did it with love and non-violence. Maybe that's the way to be right AND happy...
Tristan Scholze
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Matthew Jee
"Stop being right - and start being".
Daniel I think you could benefit greatly from watching Kathryn Schultz talk here: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html
The problem is you are walking around in your bubble of "being right" not realising that it feels exactly the same as being wrong. It confines you to a limited reality filtered through your preconceptions of "being right". You can't tell the difference between being right or being wrong until someone proves it one way or the other.
Life is much simpler when you give up the ghost of "being right" and start "just being". Life is simpler and so, oddly enough, is being right AND doing right.
Living as close to the very moment you are in as you can leads to this.
Esther Law 30+