Don't get me wrong. I'd rather be right all the time. And we can talk about overall philosophies that have been built or shaped over time, and so are applicable, still. But there have been a couple memorable instances where I began on one side of an issue, and over time, came to argue strongly for the opposite. And then I have to argue/debate with people who are using my old arguments on me. Life sometimes throws off unmistakeable echoes.

Do you do this to me so that I can never get too smug? I say, shaking my head and smiling at the Invisible God With Whom I Reflect Self-Deprecatingly. Or do you do this to teach me all the wisdom you can? I ask the God Who Always Bestows Opportunity to A Nezua.

That's how I think of Karma. Sometimes gente speak of it as a punishment. I've found that many see Karma as analagous to some I'm-Rubber-You're-Glue cosmic counterweight that lays in wait for those who think they Get Away With Shit. But I do not see the Force that created us/binds Obi Wan to us, etc, as a cruel, or cynical or punitive entity. Some Omnivorous Omniscient Crybaby that gets its giant earthly rocks off by smacking us down. What easy sport that would be. I see Karma as opportunity. I see this many-eyed plasmatic spiritu-vapor that is Us and the World and this collection of cells within cells within cells that we call Everything—I see it reaching for something. Perhaps a unified or more balanced electron tide. Or ascension, or healing. Or truth. A collective wisdom that manifests as a greater health.

I see Karma as an opportunity of and for balance. And that is why, as I said, I have before begun on the side of an issue I will one day argue against. That is Karma, and for it I am grateful. This situation offers me the opportunity to develop empathy. And so that I am not speaking to abstract Wrongpeople when I have these strong disagreements, but to myself. If I can see my own path in yours; my own heart in your eyes, it is easy to give you the understanding and love that is required for true sharing, learning, teaching, and being with other humans.

And what is the end goal, I wonder, in being so Right? Because sometimes I will do this; I will stretch behaviors or tendencies out over a long span to look closer at them and say "What does this behavior angle toward on a long trajectory?" And that is how I came to wondering this. We all do it to different degrees, no? So what do we hope to accomplish with a great enough amount of this "being right"? That one day we will have a collection of dead-on pages, a sheaf of Rightness that will exonerate us from being so frail and weak and greedy half the time? A stack of verifiable predictions that will insure our happiness or prevent us from being wrong about who to live with or share time with or believe in? What do we fear in being wrong? In admitting wrong? In showing vulnerability or flaw? Do we not see the power in the wend of wind and water?

I smell the Western Warlock in this ambition to be so correct and steadfast in our self-image. I see the drive and celebration in always being Right as one and the same as the model that is demanded by the Western mind, this paradigm of stasis, or concreteness, this image of one-standing-over; these compartmentalized and too-often rigid sections of Self, this model that leads to whack-a-mole wars and TV-fed-crazybrains and harsh medicines that seek to conquer our human terrain rather than understand and cycle with it.

george w.bush is Always Right. A long fall is always Right. A bullet is always Right. A brick wall is always right...until a bulldozer comes along.

Let me look to the everchanging, the fluid, the flexible, the humble, the shedding of skins and seasons for my own choreography. If I cling to this fixed shape here high above the ground, I am threatened and destroyed countless times. If I understand that the dirt beneath my own feet is also of my own being, than I will not be crushed when my illusions of solidity are knocked back into that heap of dirt. And why should I be? It is from that most humblest and despised of mediums that our very world is made.