It never ceases to amaze me how much our lives revolve around being wrong. When you think about it, the concept pretty much governs our daily existence. We’ll go to astounding lengths and do just about anything to avoid it - lie, dodge, hide, compromise, shed integrity like a molted skin. No matter how honorable and righteous we think we are, no matter how crystallized our so-called “moral character,” we’ll worm and slither our way out of situations where we’ve fucked up, made mistakes, generated something fundamentally incorrect (if there is such a thing) in the universe. But why? What makes being wrong so viscerally awful? It isn’t life threatening; it doesn’t stop your heart, clog your arteries or snap your spine. So why, when someone else points out your errors (and they always do - one lesson we learn early is that the best method to deflect attention away from our own wrongness is to point out someone else’s) does it feel like you’re being pressed face-down into a giant wading pool, while you thrash and flail and fight to survive? It’s not quite physical pain, but it’s a level of acute discomfort that can be (and often is) worse than gushing wounds or cracked bones. And so we’re willing to expend countless time and energy, do whatever it takes, fight as long as we have to, all to keep away from that gruesome place of wrongness. And in those sweet moments when we’re actually right (or, at least, when we think we are, or when someone else fails to issue a challenge) we bask and marinate in the juicy validation it brings. That is, until the next mistake comes along. Actually, when you think about it, being right isn’t even all that great, except for the fact that it spares you the agony of being wrong.