Admitting when you're wrong sucks. I hate it. Generally, when I'm not right about something I get this itchy, twitchy, fidgety feeling that makes me either want to run away, deny the crap out of the situation, or aggressively defend myself until I'm blue in the face. In other words, I don't like sitting in it. I feel this sense of panic come over me because I have this equation in my head that says if I'm wrong then I'm un-lovable. And yet, if a friend came to me and said, "Hey Court, turns out I'm super wrong about something and I feel like an incapable mess," I'd say to them, "Sounds like you're human. Where should we go for lunch?"

What is this attack mechanism we have with ourselves? Why does being right or wrong "count" so much to us? Why do we expect to travel through life making all the right moves at all the right times? That is ridiculous. And yet, in this moment, I'm sitting in a big, heaping stew of wrongness and I feel like a mess.

However, I'm also sitting in a big, life-definining moment of introspection. A long and arduous year of introspection to be exact, and so I can see a little bit more clearly where the edges of my right/wrong fallacy don't quite add up. I can see how being wrong, albeit painful, is a sort of... gift.

When you're wrong, you have just found out what's right. Or what's closer to right. You've gotten information, facts, a bigger sense of the picture, a foundation to springboard from, in a word: clarity. You can sweep what didn't work out the door and start working with the pieces that do work. Progress.

When you're wrong, you have just found out more about your desires. If you take a minute and think about why you so heftily defended your wrongness, or what made you think that way in the first place, or what you were craving by trying to convince yourself you were right, you can get to the bottom of some hidden gems. You get to know your feelings. And when you get to know how you want to feel, well hot damn, you can start making the moves that actually line up with your true nature.

When you're wrong, you have the opportunity to connect with love. It's tres easy to say, I told you so. It's also very easy to defend yourself at all costs. But when you're wrong and you can sit with that for awhile, you practice self-love. When you are generous with forgiving yourself, there is a well of energy that will emerge and connect you to those around you; you'll fill them with love, you'll feel a lot of tenderness. When being wrong means the opportunity to dig into your isolation and connect with the rest of the world, it's just not that bad.

So let's go get lunch.

How do you feel when you know you're wrong?

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