Am I ok with being wrong? Not necessarily that I like it, but that I can be ok with it. You don’t have to like something to be ok with it. It’s a little thing called compromise. But can I be ok with being wrong?

I want to be ok with it. I want to be easy-going, devil-may-care, chill af, what have you. But most of the time I’m not. Most of the time I review something that I’m sure is right over and over again because I’m scared it might be wrong. Most of the time I receive feedback when I’m wrong and I get angry, petulant even, and I storm around internally. Most people won’t see that, though, because being stormy, angry, petulant even, is wrong, and I’m not ok with that. I guess therein lies my answer.

So below, as above.

Which is the wrong order, but I digress. I think a lot of times I want to know if I’m right with God. I can agonize over questions like: Am I doing enough? Are we close? Does he feel like I’m seeking him enough? Because I’m acting close and I feel like I’m doing the things correctly and yet I don’t know. Am I spiraling? I don’t know if a door shutting is a blessing in disguise as the window opens or if God is thinking I’m an idiot and is trying to bail me out any way he can. Kinda like the guy in the flood who keeps praying for God to deliver him but denies rides on his neighbor’s boats and the Coast Guard’s helicopter. It’s easy to laugh at that guy, it’s also really easy to be that guy and then it isn’t as funny. Nobody wants to be that guy, we just want to laugh at his insistence on waiting for a miracle without realizing the miracle of neighborly love and, don’t laugh, the United States Coast Guard.

That distance, the distance between who I want to be and who I am in a moment, is tough to reconcile. It’s the existential, metaphysical pain of aimlessness, ungroundedness, listlessness, or acedia-ness. I’m not really sure which -ness is the right one, but I’m scared of being wrong about that too. As the great Christian screamo band, Worthwhile, once sang/screamed/vocalized, “I want to change the world so scared to change myself.” There’s always a desire to be somewhere else, to be better, to be handsomer, wealthier, influential-er. Always a desire to be all things to everybody in exactly the right way, to change the world without having to change myself. 

It’s tough to be wrong about myself. Sometimes it’s tough to be where I am, to be as good/bad as I am now, to be as handsome, as wealthy/poor, as influential as I am today. In this moment when I’m writing a blog that will most likely be seen by 3 or 4 people, who will most likely walk away with their day’s unchanged, or only fractionally lighter at my making fun of the Coast Guard. Can I be content with that? 

The point is, that wrong is only wrong because I don’t recognize what right really is most days. Sometimes right isn’t about being ideal, it’s just about being present. Because presently, I’m doing good work that is making a meaningful difference in my job. I have a wife who loves me no matter how poorly I age, she said those vows and meant them then and still means them now. I own a house and there’s food on the table and A/C during the summer, which is about as wealthy as I could ever actually ask for. The people around me listen to me and value what I say, even if they don’t already agree with it. That’s more influence than many are afforded. And those 3 or 4 people that read this? They’ve probably voiced their appreciation for my writing at one point or another.

So am I ok with being “wrong?” Sometimes. I still want to be the miracle, but maybe I’m just the Coast Guard.