THE RIGHT TO BE RIGHT

Things pass for what they seem,

not for what they are.
Few see inside;

many take to the outside.
It is not enough to be right,

if right seem false and ill.

Balthasar Gracian

The Art of Worldly Wisdom

xcix. Reality and Appearance

Several years ago, I watched a very impressive spectacle in one Moscow theatre. It was represented by the French Cultural Center in Moscow and performed by Russian actors. The title of the play was 'ART', and this fact seemed strange to me because of a photo of a skier on a playbill...
The performance was so amazing that when it was over I couldn't do anything other than keep diving in the ocean of my thoughts and emotions created by that show... It was one of those pieces of art that really make you think, and a lot...
About a year later, when I found information about that play again, I decided to go there with my colleagues. They told me: 'Ok, as we haven't had any 'cultural program' for about a year, let's go there. But you say there are no decorations, nearly no action... well, then we'll probably have a nap and you'll enjoy the play'. I answered: 'Deal. Though, I doubt you'll manage to fall asleep'. To my great pleasure, all three were absolutely astonished watching that show, they couldn't neither take their eyes from the stage, nor talk to each other as they usually did in such kind of places...
Probably, such reaction wasn't caused only by the great play of the actors. Though, it was really great. It just showed how interesting a human's psychology was. Indeed, there were nearly no decorations, no action, no special effects, and even the actors, all three, were wearing just simple black clothes. Why? To show a human's psychic in its pure action, I would say. The amazing drawings that our minds and hearts create, whether these drawings are dark or light, monochrome or colored, simple or complicated, calming or exciting...

The story develops around a piece of art that one of the three friends, Serge, buys. A very expensive piece of art. His friend, Pierre, considers it to be just outrageously expensive. And if it's so expensive for France, imagine how expensive it would be for any other place!:)
What a piece of art is it? Well.. it's a painting. What's painted? Hmmmm... here we start....
The problem is that those two guys have quite different opinions.
Serge believes that it's a mountain covered with snow, with a skier speeding down this mountain.
Pierre, extremely irritated by his friend's purchase, insists that it's just a big white square that doesn't cost a single coin, the thing that only a hopelessly stupid man could buy for 4,000,000 francs, to adore it staring at the skier invented by his own sick imagination. There is also the third friend, Alan. He has several explanations for the whiteness of the square: the skier is wearing snow-white clothes, or maybe he just speeds too fast and we can hardly see him, or maybe he has already gone and we weren't just on time to notice him. That guy has a lot of versions, including the Pierre's one. He is just not sure which one of them is correct. And he becomes the scapegoat in this story for his inability to take any of the two sides. This guy seems to have a problem with self-definition. Or, maybe there is something else?

It's possible that sometimes such people as this Alan can harass us even more than our unwavering opponents. Being in the middle, they are so close to us, it seems we just need a little more arguments and they will be in our camp. Cause our camp is the right one. We know that. It's so obvious since it's our side. We cannot be wrong, can we?:) And here, with his uncertain and unclear opinion that neutrality-loving man leads us to the core of the whole story.

It's really important to be right, isn't it? As long as the truth is only one (according to the way we usually consider it to be) if we're not right we're wrong. We are under the X-line. It's just nearly like being dead. So, to feel alive, whenever we do something wrong (even knowing for sure that it's wrong) we find whatever explanations that could make us right, whoever who could substitute us and be responsible for that what's happened. Many of us do it even in the most ridiculous situations. It's our first and mostly subconscious reactions: self-defense. But it seems that it's not only the matter of our security... There are a lot of situations, like the one that is showed in the play I'm talking about, when the subject is not that serious and principle. But we're in our own frame of reference, and A here has its unique co-ordinate of truth. All the other co-ordinates are false. But we're not alone. There are also such close people as our family members and our friends living in our world. Their A, B, etc. should have the same co-ordinates that our own A and B have. On the other hand, those people have in fact their own worlds, where A and B may have, and most often they do have, another co-ordinates. Sometimes these co-ordinates are quite far from what we have. What any of the sides should do in this situation?
The world is really big, you know. There is a lot of space for other frames of reference. Everyone goes on living in his own world which is closed for another one when the matter of differences becomes principal. Cause in everyone's world there can be only one truth for each particular subject.
Walls.., borders.., barriers.., whatever except for a normal exchange of energies that is to take place between close people.
But we are right and we have our own truth. If the other one truly loves us, if he is worthy of us, he must be smart enough to admit that he's wrong, and to ask for forgiveness. Most likely, we will forgive him. But since we know for sure that we are right, we are not going to ask for forgiveness. It would be just illogical to do so, wouldn't it?:)

Being right we should be happy, wasn't it the most important for us? Though, curiously, as the time passes, we don't actually feel that happy with our truth. Its value reduces unreasonably. Or, maybe it doesn't happen so unreasonably? And what if this rightfulness is not that what we desired that much? Maybe the truth we're searching for lays somewhat deeper than we usually expect it to be? Maybe a simple logic doesn't work here and we should use some other of our abilities in our search? Maybe the real goal that we seek is just being together with people we love, living in the common world?

What if in our fight for truth that we start to keep our loved ones in our world, we suddenly forget about this aim substituting it for another one? The means - making those people share our truth - that we used to be together with them, get modified and converted into our goal - making them admit our rightfulness - and, at the same time, become our hidden means to reach our hidden (sometimes hidden even from us) goal - to make our loved ones with their 'wrong opinions' leave our 'right' world...
I know it sounds strange and very contradictory, but it seems that's the way it sometimes happens... Consciously, we don't mean exiling those people from our life. But we all know how it usually happens, and nevertheless, very often, we go on fighting...

Although, going back to our first reason for making those people share our
truth... maybe our searching for truth is in fact searching for LOVE? But if it's so, then, instead of fighting for being right, wouldn't it be better just to LOVE?

By the way, for those who are curious about the end of that story, here it is:

'My friend, Serge, has bought a painting for 4,000,000 francs.
On this painting there is a mountain whole covered with white-white snow.
A skier dressed in white speeds down the mountain very fast, he goes farther and farther until he becomes a small invisible spot...'

The play ends with these Pierre's words:) And you know what? He's happy as you may probably guess. Probably, he's found some deeper meaning for his truth;)

...I just hope that the next time I feel an irresistible desire to become right, I'll find enough wisdom to stop for a moment and think... just to know if that's what I really want...:)