Would You Rather be Happy or Be Right?

It’s been more than twenty years now since I heard Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie deliver a sermon at the Arlington Street Church in Boston titled ‘Would You Rather Be Happy or Be Right?’ The distinctions she laid out on that sunny Sunday morning have stayed with me ever since. Given Reverend Crawford Harvie’s generous perspective, and the Unitarian-Universalist penchant for relativism, she did not make a definitive claim in favor of one perspective over another. However, by questioning the absolutism inherent in the word ‘right,’ she leaned heavy in the direction of happiness.

At that time I was impressed, and confounded, by the duality between being happy and being right. They are not opposites. They do not reside in realms of mutual exclusivity. There’s not even any consistent correlation between them. I also realized that my own ideas of ‘right’ and ‘happy’ were more intertwined than Reverend Harvie Crawford described. Though I’d never thought about it before, I really can’t be happy, unless I feel I’m doing right.

I must digress to state that ‘right’ and ‘righteous’ are not the same thing. People who are righteous think they know the correct way to be, and they inflict it on others. People who strive to be right seek to be true to themselves. A few things in this world are universally ‘right,’ like the Golden Rule. But for many of us, there are myriad…