Understanding the Right Way

Understanding the Right Things

John Paul Derryberry

We have this thing going on in culture now where there seems to be a reaction to everything occurring everywhere. It's almost as if we know there is constant injustice occurring in the world and we must right all the wrongs with a tweet, a comment, a video. I think we have arrived at this point because, as we have become interconnected with far-off corners of the world, it has shown us just how hard and hopeless some people's lives are. We can better highlight the problem of income equality, racism, sexism, and countless other issues our society faces. But better highlighting of problems doesn't necessarily produce better solutions. Have you ever been in a relationship and you know exactly what the problem is, but realized knowing the problem and solving it are two very different equations? 

I think this is where we find ourselves in our outrage at jokes or comments. Because we cannot solve the big problems, we go looking for action on any and every little problem,  We hope we move society forward in pointing out someone mis-wording a tweet. I remember so desperately wanting to lower the amount of emotional and mental pain in our society that I would tell people what to do to ease it. It wasn't until an interaction with a young teen, where she yelled- "I know the problem is my mom and how I let her treat me, but what I'm supposed to do is not love my mom? I can't solve this problem that way!"  It was an eye-opening experience, because we say all the time to leave those situations, to do the right thing, but the right thing in that situation is so complicated and an emotional jumble of every emotion imaginable.

What prompted this yelling was me sternly saying, "This problem continues to exist because you continue to allow your mom to treat you in a way that isn't healthy."  My statement was true but wrong. I know that is a hard thing to believe but a factual statement about the right thing to do can be way off the mark. I adjusted my approach to asking questions about how to love your mom and find a healthy life. And, what would that look like for you? The client and I started game planning the pros and cons for what was the right way to navigate this relationship as it unfolding throughout her life. The notion that there was one right way faded from my vocabulary and the idea that I had to understand the right things was put in place instead.

And the "do the right thing" way of thinking has become problematic because, with social media and how much culture we consume, we have a freaking opinion on what the right thing is for everyone, everywhere, all the freaking time. The problem with this is we are human. We are bound to screw up, do the wrong thing, say an incentive remark, choose our words wrong but instead of ten people, that might play out over thousands of people, and with people that we have never met. And those people, in the name of doing the right thing, chime in how we should have known better, or have understood how this very complicated dynamic plays out in different areas of the world. That calculation is very hard. At my job, I make decisions that affect 100 people, and math is extremely difficult. I can't imagine the mental hurdles to scale that up to 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 and so on. Even when writing this blog, I don't imagine one million readers. I write to one reader and hope it translates. 

I'm sure I have screwed up, I'm sure people read and roll their eyes. I'm sure some people have vowed to never read again. All of that is okay as long as I continue my attempts to first, understand the right things, and then, attempt to do the right thing. I have continually come around to realizing that the right thing to do is to help people figure out the right thing for them, with the boundaries of, it doesn't hurt other people. Maybe that isn't the right thing to do. Maybe it is, but the point is treating everyone as if they are works in progress not as some finished product that knows exactly what to do in every situation. Maybe the right thing to do for all of us, is to think less of what we know is the right thing to do all the time, and more of, how can I help you figure out the right thing for you. The saying is doing the right thing is hard, the truth is understanding the right things is way harder.