I'd rather be wrong

The other day it struck me that in my relationships with others, when disagreement arises, were I to be given the choice of being either the person in the right, or the person in the wrong, I'd rather be the person in the wrong.
The reason for this is quite simple.
If I'm the person who's in the wrong, and I can recognize that, I can apologize for my mistake and, hopefully, correct my behavior.
By contrast, if I'm the person who's in the right, I'm then at the mercy of the other party!
Unless they are willing to address the problem and work to fix it, the problem remains and there is NOTHING I can do about it!

One of the hardest things we have to learn as humans is how to admit wrongdoing without making victims of ourselves in the process.

The most valuable change that has taken place in my life since I started transitioning is that I've learned how to forgive myself.  Learning to be wrong is proving to be the most profoundly liberating experience of my life.  When I have the good fortune to recognize that I'm the one who's making the mistake, once the initial rush of shame and anger subsides, I'm finding that suddenly having the power to fix the problem is amazing. Afterwards I get to feel good about having spotted the error and fixed it rather than geting all defensive and then going off to beat up on myself for being the only person who ever got anything wrong in the history of ever.

I think it's incredibly sad how fallibility and weakness are so often seen to be irredeemable flaws in our society.  Learning to concede ones mistakes with grace can be the most empowering lesson you'll ever learn.

Of course, I'm stil learning how to tell when I'm in the wrong and more often than not both sides are often right and wrong in their own different ways meaning it's rare you'll be lucky enough to be completely in the wrong and thereby able to solve the problem entirely on your own.

Trust me though, if you approach every disagreement prepared to prove yourself wrong, you'll almost certainly get a better outcome.  At least so long as you value solving problems over inflating your own ego.