Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?

During this Friday’s family night dinner, my ex and I had an altercation.  He said something that I thought was demeaning to Jonah, and so I said something that he perceived was demeaning to him.  It was a classic scenario of old, where we both reacted (overreacted?) to each other’s comments too quickly and interpreted them to have malicious intent.  In addition, what I had said was true.  It was something that I have been frustrated about, and it was true.  I was right.  Even my friend Tobey, who very rarely takes my side of any argument, said to me a week or so ago that I had every right to feel frustrated about this particular issue.  Damn, in this case, it was so clear that I had truth and justice on my side.  I bet I could have started a Facebook group about this and gotten a thousand “likes” in twenty-four hours.  That’s how right I was.

Unfortunately, though, this wasn’t an argument that I was going to win.  Being right was just a bitter pill.  Trying to get him to see my point of view was just further polarizing the issue and leading us down an overgrown path that we both know is never, ever going to be cleared, no matter how many back hoes we run into it.

Read the rest of this entry »