Who is really the bad guy?

There are likely very few people who would fully admit to being the bad guy.

Most of us, whether it's a racist point of view or a difference of opinion with family, will justify and defend our point of view as the 'right' way.  We would likely consider ourselves good people, who simply want others to agree with us and align with our belief, so that the world would be a better place.

So who is the bad guy?

It's pretty easy to see in movies and on television.  But if you ask a member of the KKK if he considers himself a bad guy, he would likely say no, defend his viewpoints and argue that he is trying to make the world a better place based on his beliefs (which are not bad or wrong to him).  If you ask a black person if a member of the KKK is a bad guy, the answer would be a resounding yes.

Here is where most of us get stuck.  Most of us are unwilling to look beyond our beliefs and points of view.

No one wants to be the bad guy.  Most people hate to be wrong and most people want to avoid feeling bad. 

It's easier to defend the rightness of our point of view and beliefs than it is to question and admit that perhaps we made a mistake.  

The more emotionally charged a topic, the more likely we are to cling to our rightness and our reasons/justifications/beliefs.

But questioning ourselves and our beliefs is actually the most powerful gift we can give to ourselves.

If we don't go into the shame and guilt of being wrong, and simply admit that there might be another way, we actually leave room to create what it is we truly desire.

Instead of spending our energy defending our beliefs and trying to convince everyone why we are right, we actually create a space to have something different.

I recently went through this myself.  Maybe you noticed there wasn't a blog last week.  Maybe you didn't. I had to take some time to re-calibrate and re-group for myself because I had over-committed and over-extended myself.

I could have powered through, pushed out some half-assed shit to get it done, justified why I was right in saying yes to so many things, defended my reasons for going, going, going.  I could have blamed everyone for asking me to do everything (couldn't they do it themselves or find someone else?).  

Instead I chose to stop.  I admitted to myself I made a mistake.  I was making everyone else more important than me.  I no longer blame anyone for asking me to do anything because I always have the choice to say no.  They are not responsible, nor should they be blamed, for my choice to say yes.

I took a week to re-assess and get things in order so I could start again.  Stopping to admit I was wrong in how I was handling my life at the moment created the space for me to actually look at solutions on how to change it to create what it is I truly want.

This is a minor example and less emotionally charged than the examples mentioned earlier.  Yet, the core truth remains the same.  It's just that our emotions and our need to be right cloud out everything except what we believe is true.

I have noticed a trend around certain topics where there is almost a knee-jerk emotional response that doesn't leave any room for discussion.  It's either this or that.  Right or wrong.  Good or bad.

Life is not so clear cut.  There are many, many, many shades of gray. But more and more people are clinging to this dichotomy of it has to be this or that.  And if you are not this, you are automatically that (which is likely not even true, it's just a story we made it up to defend the rightness of our point of view and belief).

Where are we defending ourselves?  What do we actually want to create? 

We are more divided than ever and the saying is true that divided we fall, united we stand.  What might change if we decided to look at what is we really want, rather than using our reasons and emotions to defend a point of view about it?  What might change if we admitted that maybe we are wrong and life isn't the dichotomy we are making it out to be?