Some marriage counselors like to ask their clients, “Do you want to be right or in relationship?” This Socratic method approach suggests that “being right” may be more difficult and lonelier than you might initially think. In addition, being in relationship may not always include being “right.”
Below are two references that have crossed my desk today. The first is a is a Tricycle article on Zen Ethics which includes a second reference, the poem, “A Place Where We Are Right,” by the Israeli poet Yehudi Amichai.
May you find one or more of these words of wisdom helpful in your daily discernment.
—————————————–
“A Place Where We Are Right,” a poem by the Israeli poet Yehudi Amichai, shows this consequence perfectly:
From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.
The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.
But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.
(from The Selected Poetry of Yehudi Amichai, translation by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell, University of California Press, 1996, used with permission of the translators)
Life Matters 