On her blindness

Do you like being wrong?

Even if you said you do or don’t mind it, the truth is that no one likes being wrong. We are inherently narcissistic, egotistic, and detestably haughty. The mortal danger of this lethal concoction is that it presents itself as an innocent lamb, a good-for-your self-confidence, self-esteem, self-worth elixir when in truth, it is a devouring parasite to your soul.

These deadly traits come built into every human but if the newborn is graced and trained up with wisdom and understanding, they enjoy the juicy abundance of life and the world with ease and joy. But alas, most of us have less than-ideal upbringings, therefore this foolishness is tightly bound up in our young hearts. As such, these monsters grow with us, feeding off us to gain power over us with the sole aim of taking over us completely and erasing us from life through cunning deceptions that steal, destroy, and ultimately kill our lives.

Perhaps you would never consider yourself to be afflicted with narcissism because you’ve been labeled or labeled yourself as a loser, with low self-esteem and nonexistent confidence. Surely you’re not egotistic, you may feel and think you’re virtually invisible and your oppressively timid, self-effacing awkward manner that scurries away from the limelight in humiliation has nothing to do with pride. So did I, until I pondered the concept of inferior narcissism, egoism, and pride.

A narcissist is a person who has an excessive interest in or admiration of themselves, an egoist is a self-centered, selfish, arrogantly conceited person and a haughty person is arrogantly superior and disdainful. Conversely, an inferior narcissist is a person who has an excessive interest in debasing themselves; an inferior egoist is a self-centered, self-absorbed, stubbornly self-loathing person; and an inferior haughty person is bitterly scornful and disparaging.

In and of ourselves, we cannot vividly see any of these parasites – or commonly known as character or personality flaws, and negative attitudes that silently suck the wellness and wholeness from our souls, transforming us into wraiths who eventually cannot bear to dwell among the living.

The truth is, absolutely no human can know all things perfectly therefore we are wise to consider that we are more likely to be wrong often, and seldom right. But how can we live and interact well in life if we are more wrong than we are right?

We must ask: to find out and know what we do not know, as well as continually assess the completeness and truthfulness of what we think we know, and we must fervently seek: to see what we may be missing in the blind spots of our inadequate perspectives, wisdom, and understanding.

Coming to consider that we are wrong is a noble practice of humility. Therefore, it will not be easy because it demands that we unearth deep-seated beliefs that what and how we see and understand ourselves, life and the people around us is the official way, and unlearn all the assumptions and presumptions we have labored to build.

In chapter twenty-seven verse six of his Proverbs, wise King Solomon declares that “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.”

Having a trustworthy friend who can love you enough to graciously alert you to your blind spots is a precious gift, but often our egos can get in the way, causing us to reject counsel, rebukes, and correction. In any such case, it is wise to recognize our ego as the enemy that would seek to blind us from access to more wisdom and understanding.

However, if we are desperately loath to hear the truth from others, our best bet is to appoint ourselves a friend to ourselves and commit to ruthless truth-awareness – which is, the continual pursuit of authentic self-awareness, sober judgment of life, and modest discernment towards others.

This would mean being ultra present and alert throughout our day and interactions followed by copious amounts of solitude to intro and retrospect, abstract and process.

Although quite precious, when you find yourself without faithful friends who would speak the truth to you with grace and love, this is the harder and least efficient way. Nevertheless, I should still recommend making every effort to discover a true friend.

In the language of the country where I was born, the proverb goes: “umutw’umwe wifasha gusara”, which when translated means one head helps itself to go mad. I have held a great fondness for the wisdom in this proverb and I believe it has saved me from the many cliffs where I should have plunged to the pits of lunacy.

For the longest time, I thought and saw myself as worthless, inadequate, incapable, and damned. When I glimpsed in the mirror, I saw hideousness that churned my stomach. I saw: too fat, too short, too “Bantu”, too black and disadvantaged, too feisty and radical, too sensual…too sinful.

As long as I held firmly to these thoughts, stubbornly defending and affirming them to myself and others, my life dimmed and shriveled to the point that I hated all of life and craved death, believing it was the only answer or solution to the torment of my tunnel vision.

It wasn’t until I cast pride to hell and asked family, friends, and even strangers for specifics of what they saw in, of, and about me that I awakened to a “me” I was blind to, and this has and continues to make all the difference. I am amazed at how so wrong I have been on all things, and how many more things I know absolutely nothing about, though initially, I postulated through my vain imaginings.

I am seeing the whole truth of me, life, and people: the good, and the evil. the beautiful and the ugly. And this is my superpower! The more truthfully I see and know who I am, what life is and could be, and who people are, the more I can walk into the freedom of the paths naturally marked out for me, and those earnest ones I get to forge on my own.

A lot of our socialization and innate dispositions urge us to be right and do or get things right. Of course, this is not bad in and of itself, except that our aversion to being, doing, or getting things wrong feeds the pride monster within us that robs us of the superpower of repentance.

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.”

Being right all the time is a pointless, wearisome, and deadly yoke but conceding to the fact that we could be – and more often than not are – wrong empowers us to change our minds.

Our minds thrive from the agility and expansion that comes from curiosity, new knowledge, and wisdom. But if we are fixated on being right, we become stifled and frustrated in an ever-changing, growing world.

Like magnifying glasses, our thoughts and feelings greatly affect what we focus on to the exclusion of all else. Oftentimes we obsess over ideas about ourselves, life, the world, and people, even to the point of temptation to self-destruct or nihilism.

I wonder what could be if we would pause, breathe, and muster the courage to consider that there’s got to be more than we are seeing, more that we could know and more that could be, and so much more we can become.

In my experience of going from scandalous self-righteous deception to this meek place, I commend that it is far better to ever be wrong than to be destroyed and harm many others in the wake of our illusion of omniscience.

Embracing and growing to accept the stacked odds that we are more likely to be wrong is perhaps the most right thing we can do daily to enjoy life’s dynamic ebbs and flows, and highs and lows with ease, joy, and light-hearted peaceful contentment.

Of this, I’m pretty sure I am right 😉

xoxo

Nimi