The hidden power of right and wrong

The Hidden Power of Right and Wrong

Every single day, we use language that supports or challenges our beliefs. Many of those beliefs were established long before we had the capacity to question them and since then, we’ve just gone with it.

Last week, we talked about intellectual detachment: creating space between what happens, what we believe it means, and what is actually true.

This week, I want to take that one step further.

What if there is no right or wrong, but instead expectation and alignment?

Think about how easily we say, “I made the wrong choice.”

That is a definitive statement. But if you think in terms of science and methodology, you are making a claim with that sentence, so, what does that actually mean? What are you saying, in truth?

That you didn't get the outcome you wanted? That something didn't go as expected? That someone disagreed with you? That you experienced discomfort? Or perhaps it’s simply, knowing what you know now, you’d choose differently?

Those are five very different things. Yet we can describe all five as wrong.

I want to double-click on what is happening there.

1)      When we organize our thinking into right and wrong, we create a binary framework — leaving us with a binary solution.

2)      The moment we tell ourselves, “I want to make the right choice,” we inadvertently introduce the possibility of making the wrong one. Your brain is smart (and kind of sneaky…) Suddenly, even though you were thinking positive, there's pressure: What if I get it wrong?

A decision might be effective, ineffective, premature, reasonable, uninformed, appropriate under these circumstances, and unsuitable under another, or the best decision with the information available at the time.

That's a lot of complexity to compress into two little words. We're using simplified binary language to evaluate a world of variables. And perhaps, more to our detriment, the language of right and wrong has the power to end an investigation before it begins.

Let's bring this back to Theory and “Why”. Imagine you're driving home. Your fuel light comes on, but you decide to drive twenty more minutes without stopping.

Now you're sitting on the side of the road, seven minutes from the gas station, probably annoyed, telling yourself:

I should have stopped. The right thing to do was get fuel. I'm such an idiot.

But hold on. Before the accusations. What do we actually know?

The car ran out of fuel before reaching its destination.

That’s the true truth.

The car isn't wrong for running out of fuel, and you're not wrong for believing you could make it to the station. Your expectation simply didn't align with the conditions.

Everything else is meaning we're assigning to the experience.

So, what happens if we remove the judgement?

Instead of "I made the wrong choice," we might say, "This was the situation, this was the action, and this was the result."

Suddenly, there's something to explore.

What did I expect to happen? What information did I have? What influenced my decision? What is my next step? And what might I consider next time?

“But I made the decision based on how I was feeling at the time and now I’ve made it worse!”

Again, I want to watch the language. How you were feeling is valid! Being tired, running late, or not wanting to stop in the cold are all relevant factors. They belong in the equation right alongside the amount of fuel in the tank and the distance left to travel.

And that's where the pause becomes so important. Intellectual detachment gives us the opportunity to examine the variables rather than letting the judgement of right or wrong make us feel some kind of way about it.

If I stop for fuel, what happens? If I continue driving, what might happen? What am I willing to risk, and what result am I trying to achieve? If I don’t make it to the station, how might I feel then?

Again: Truth does not carry the weight of right or wrong. We assign that weight through judgement.

Truth just is what it is.

And I wonder what might change if we stop treating every decision as if it has to be correct. What happens to our anxieties and worries if we stop coloring our choices with emotional crayons and instead write our labels in pencil.

Perhaps the question isn't whether we’re making the right choices, it’s whether the path we choose is aligned with our intended results.