Imagine you’re riding a bicycle.
You’re cycling the right way up a narrow one-way street.
Suddenly, coming the other way is a massive truck.
The truck is coming straight towards you.
But it’s going the wrong way down the one-way street.
You, on your bicycle, are going the right way.
You have two choices.
You can turn around and cycle away as fast as you can.
Although it’s the wrong way, you’ll at least be cycling away from the truck.
Or you can insist on being right.
The truck is in wrong, it’s going the wrong way.
You’re in the right, you’re going the right way.
So you can carry on cycling the right way.
Straight into the truck, which runs over you and squashes you.
You’re dead.
You’re right, but you’re dead.
You’re DEAD RIGHT.
Which is how most of us choose to live our lives.
Well actually that’s not quite true.
We don’t choose it, we do it because we have no choice.
We think with our emotional minds not with our rational minds.
Our rational mind says “Don’t be silly, you can’t fight a truck, it doesn’t matter who’s right at this point, just get out of the way, stay alive”.
That’s what our rational mind says.
But our emotional mind says “Screw him, I’m in the right and he’s in the wrong. He should turn around and drive the other way. I’m damned if I’ll give way when he’s in the wrong”.
And we lose because we let our emotional mind do our thinking.
Which is exactly how we run our lives.
Our emotional mind is in control over our rational mind.
Whether it’s an argument while driving, or an argument with our boss, an argument with our partner, or any argument.
We don’t get what we actually want.
But we get to be right.
And, after we’re fired or divorced, we can always argue that we were right.
And we were: DEAD RIGHT.
Because we let emotion take over from reason.
The correct question in these situations isn’t “Who is right?”
The correct question is “What’s most likely to get me what I want?”
I doubt if winning a pointless fight will get you what you want.
It will probably allow you to be right.
But it will probably also cost you what you really wanted.
So you will get to be DEAD RIGHT.
Isn’t it smart to realise this and try thinking differently?
Turn around and cycle away from the truck, let it go.
At least you’ll still be alive.
In the process of your life there will be many truck coming the wrong way down one-way streets.
If you fight with every truck you’re going to get run over a lot.
And you won’t get very far up the street.
All you’ll get is being DEAD RIGHT.
See, the purpose of life isn’t to wage a one-man justice crusade to make sure the world always treats you fairly
That will never happen.
The purpose is to be smart.
Accept the fact that there will be idiots in trucks, but don’t let them distract you from where you’re going.
Don’t let outside events write your agenda.
As Buddha said “Act, don’t react”.
Reminds me of one of my father’s favourite expressions: “Gross tonnage ALWAYS has right-of-way”. A traffic variant of “might makes right”.
I was about to do something silly because I was dead right but this changed my agenda. Thanks Dave.
Why do I get the feeling that this is one lesson you learned the hard way Dave? (Just like I did myself. Truth be told, I’m still learning it…)
As you say Connor, still learning it.
It’s like exercise, you don’t do it once and then that’s it.
You have to keep doing it
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