What is the real price of being right?

This question is born from a heated argument. Voices are raised. In each corner, the combatant’s chests heave with indignation. Outrage fills the room. In this self-righteously charged atmosphere, there is no longer any gray, just black or white, right or wrong, and an inability to compromise, on anything, even the small insignificant ideas you might have tossed away a day ago.

Impasse. Blockage. Deadlock. Stalemate. What is the real price of being right?

Everybody has a point of view, that one square foot from where all core beliefs spring from. Some are passionate, others keep it to themselves, but when worlds collide the differences create a vast canyon of outrage, do you stay and fight it out or let it go?

What happens when there is no seeing eye-to-eye? How do we decide who the victor is? Are we so sure in our point of view that we are willing to risk it all? I am a Libra through and through, which makes me hold those heavy scales up with each argument.

I have stepped outside my body and watched the passion of my opponent. Like a bandage being ripped off a hairy piece of skin, it comes as a shock that my challenger feels precisely the same way I do.

I am not necessarily speaking about politics or human rights. I’m talking about the stuff of everyday life, the blood, and guts that make up friendships or family; borrowing money, who saw it first, what was said. The real important things in a relationship.

Is proving you are right different with friends than it is with siblings? What happens when going toe to toe with a spouse or partner? How about a parent and child scuffle?

What’s the point of it all? Does any of it really matter in the end? Is any argument really winnable when you fight with a loved one? How much will you lose by being the victor?

What is the true price of victory and in that triumph what are you really winning?