Does Being Right Make You Feel Better?

Ram Dass said,

“When you want to become free, your righteousness and anger are much less interesting than they used to be.” (Ram Dass, Fear, Anger & Love)

I love this quote.

We know something are wrong and right.

And so for years, I kept winning an argument with a “friend” from an old chapter of my life.

I practiced my words in the car.

I delivered it flawlessly to the windshield.

He had no idea.

He was living his life.

I was living in the argument.

You may have one too.

It happens in the shower. In the car. While you pour coffee into your mug.

Others are with people you no longer speak to, or explanations no one stayed to hear.

The rerun always ends the same way.

You win.

There is a little heat, a flash of the old fire.

Then the tiredness returns.

You have won a thousand verdicts in your favor, and not one has made you feel better for long.

The anger may be the only reward you ever received.

What if putting it down means they get away with it?

There is a way to leave without agreeing with them, forgiving before you are ready, or pretending it did not matter.

Ram Dass hid it in the least spiritual word in his sentence.

Maybe that is the practice.

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