Beyond Right and Wrong: A Return to What Works

A remembering for all of us who are tired of being right and alone.

There is a moment — tender, disorienting, liberating — when you realize the frame you’ve been using to navigate life is the very thing that’s been shrinking it.

Most of us were raised inside a world that teaches us to sort everything into two boxes:

Good / Bad.

Right / Wrong.

It sounds moral.

Responsible.

Clear.

But beneath it is something far more fragile:

the fear of being wrong.

Because let’s be honest — none of us like being wrong.

Not in our relationships.

Not in our work.

Not in the stories we tell about ourselves.

Not in the beliefs we’ve built our lives around.

To be wrong feels dangerous because, in the architecture of empire, wrongness has never been about information — it has been about worth.

Wrong people are punished.

Wrong people lose belonging.

Wrong people are untrustworthy, unlovable, unsafe.

So we learn early:

Don’t ever be wrong.

Or at the very least — be wrong quietly, privately, apologetically.

And from that moment, communication begins to collapse.

Because when being wrong feels like annihilation, dialogue becomes performance.

Collaboration becomes competition.

Curiosity becomes threat.

Difference becomes danger.

The good/bad, right/wrong frame doesn’t just shape how we evaluate our own choices — it shapes how we relate to other human beings.

Suddenly:

If you don’t agree with me, one of us must be wrong.

If your experience doesn’t align with mine, one of us must be mistaken.

If your worldview challenges mine, one of us must defend.

We forget that multiple truths can coexist.

We forget that perspectives are shaped by histories.

We forget that human beings are complex, contradictory, evolving creatures.

And so we arrive where we are today:

a world full of people who are very right about their views,

and increasingly willing to make others wrong for not sharing them.

We see it in our families.

We see it in our politics.

We see it in our workplaces.

We see it online every minute of every day — a global chorus of certainty, drowning out nuance, tenderness, and dialogue.

But here is the cost:

When everyone is busy being right, no one is listening.

When being wrong is unbearable, no one is learning.

When conversations become battlegrounds, no one is collaborating.

And when every difference must be sorted into good/bad, we lose the very thing that makes us capable of working together:

our shared humanity.

But something extraordinary becomes possible the moment we step out of the binary and into a different frame:

Not “Is this right or wrong?”

but “Does this work? What might be missing?”

This shift changes everything.

Because what works is not a moral judgement — it’s an inquiry.

It keeps the conversation open.

It honours complexity.

It invites collaboration rather than defensiveness.

Suddenly a disagreement isn’t a threat — it’s data.

A different perspective isn’t an attack — it’s an expansion.

A mistake isn’t a failure — it’s a feedback loop.

We stop needing to be right and start needing to understand.

We stop making others wrong and start getting curious about what shaped them.

We stop shutting down conversations and start opening them wider.

And in that widening, something essential returns:

our ability to create together.

In relationships, this shift softens the space between us. We no longer weaponize our certainty. We can finally hear one another.

In leadership, it unlocks innovation. When people aren’t terrified of being wrong, they bring their boldest ideas, their real concerns, their creativity.

In community, it makes true collaboration possible. Not consensus — collaboration. The art of weaving many truths into a shared path.

In our own lives, it frees us from the self-imposed prison of perfection. We stop negotiating with fear and start partnering with possibility.

Because when the frame changes, the world changes.

Right/wrong shrinks us.

What works expands us.

Right/wrong isolates.

What works connects.

Right/wrong makes us defensive.

What works makes us curious.

Right/wrong keeps us performing.

What works brings us home to ourselves.

Love, this shift is not small.

It is a return to something ancient, something relational, something deeply human — the knowing that we do not have to be right to be worthy, and we do not have to make others wrong in order to belong.

When we give up the frame of right/wrong, we don’t lose morality.

We lose the fear that has been eroding our relationships, our creativity, and our capacity to collaborate.

We gain space.

We gain breath.

We gain each other.

And for the first time, perhaps in a long time,

we gain a way of living that actually works.