I have done some dumb things in my life. You want a funny example – how about admitting to a girl who was crazy in love with me that I didn’t feel the same way… right before the movie was about to start. I mean honesty is good right, but so is timing, and I can tell you with complete honesty that that was one awkward movie.
Just one of many things on a very long list, I assure you.
But when it comes to doing something actually wrong, it’s truly a shorter list, but some of the items on that list haunt me to this day. I think we all live with those things that we wish we hadn’t done or said. Yet I've come to realize recently that in some aspects of my life, trying to not add another item to my ‘wrong list’ has caused me to actually do something that was truly wrong.
Because I had a dysfunctional definition of whether a certain behavior was ‘wrong’.
One of my favorite authors passed away a few years ago. He wrote books that on the surface looked like comedic fantasy, but underneath the strange characters, hilarious storylines and brilliantly conceived plot reveals was actually a wealth of philosophy and wisdom that still lives with me today. One of those gems of knowledge goes something like this…
“You don’t need whips in your hands when they have chains in their heads”.
And a dysfunctional definition of what ‘wrong’ looks like can be like that, chaining you to a pattern of behavior that looks like it is the ‘right thing to do’, but that actually doesn’t serve you at all. Or worse, it can led you to a lifetime of feeling guilty about something that you felt was wrong, but that was actually the right thing to, depending on your definition of what was right and wrong in the situation.
So I think sometimes it can be worthwhile to look at what you consider to be wrong.
Because let’s face it, there’s no shortage of voices in the world today clamoring to tell you what is ‘right and wrong’. I grew up in a country, (and specifically in a community) where the idea of ‘getting ahead’ was looked at as something distasteful. In fact Madonna, when she moved to England to marry her then husband Guy Ritchie, wrote in a Times of London article that she didn’t realize that she was moving to a country where ambition was ‘frowned upon’.
Talk about chains in your head – I have had (and still have) to struggle and fight to get that teaching out of my head.
A few weeks ago I spoke with a good friend who was struggling with a pervasive sense of having done something wrong many years ago, and was in effect ‘punishing themselves’ for what they thought was something terrible. I won’t betray their privacy by going into too much detail, but as I worked with them, going deeper into the factors that led to a difficult decision, I came to realize that what they thought was a terrible thing was actually the best way out of a terrible decision.
And I was amazed by their strength in making a choice that many would not have had the courage to make.
As we talked, I explained my perspective on their choice. I think it was hard for them at first to understand what I was trying to explain, but once that moment of revelation hit them, things started to shift in their soul. What was a life defining ‘mistake’ became a moment to be proud of. Years of guilt were reinterpreted into a sense of having done the right thing.
It’s incredible to see how much damage can be done when living with a dysfunctional definition of wrong.
We all live with choices every day, and I’m guessing if you follow this work that the majority of your choices are good ones. Yet I’m sure if you sit down and listen to your soul, you have a feeling around some of your choices that isn’t always pleasant. Whether or not you made the right choice, well that’s between you and your sense of reality, but I’ll tell you this…
Not everything that you think was wrong was actually so, and some of them were probably right.
Because as humans we sometimes have to make hard choices. As one of my greatest mentors once said, “sometimes all you have are bad choices, but you still have to choose’. Life can present you with tough situations; choices for which there are no easy answers, but making the hard decisions doesn’t make you a bad person, or mean that you chose to do ‘wrong’.
It means you are a human being in a universe that doesn’t play nice with others.
So if you have some great sense of guilt you are carrying, I invite you today to bring it out into the light, and reexamine it. I’m not here to absolve you of guilt, but I also don’t want you to live with any more of it than you absolutely have to.
Far too many people have been taught a dysfunctional definition of wrong for far too long.
And it’s weighing them down, when it doesn’t have to.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings