I am a self-confessed news/political junkie.  At least I was until recently. 

After a tremendous week long vacation and the best Christmas holiday in memory, I sat down this week to enjoy our small-town newspaper’s  2007 ‘Year In Review’ issue. While flipping the pages  I found myself pausing at what is arguably our biggest local news story of the year - protests and illegal blockades by a group of local Mohawk Natives and the subsequent arrest of their leader.  Being adjacent to a reserve, Native disputes and the resulting conflict are a particularly sensitive issue in this region, as they are in similar communities across Canada and the U.S.  This is not a commentary on these issues, although I am grateful for the moment of reflection perpetuated by the story.

While reading the recollection of the events I could feel the lifelong opinions that I have held on the matter rising in my mind. Many fragments of ‘fact’ that I have gathered and formed into an opinion and so many arguments (completely valid in my mind) as to why my opinion is ‘right’. I now realize that although I may not always speak aloud on such matters, the very fact I form these opinions at all only perpetuates the conflict.

Everyone exposed to matters of conflict, be it directly or indirectly is being asked to form an opinion, and our nature directs us to seek out reasons to validate why we are ‘right’ and by definition why a differing opinion is ‘wrong’. In some cases the need to be right is fueled by multi-generational opinions, the pile of rationalizations (and consequently the conflict itself) growing as each generation picks up the torch of defending their need to be right.

What if we took right and wrong completely out of the picture? What if everyone on both sides of a conflict, any conflict, took the time to forget everything they know (or more accurately think they know) about the matter and concentrated on what can be done to end the conflict right NOW without the interference of past ideology and learning? I believe most people may refer to it as Peace.

I have admittedly and ashamedly spent the majority of my adult life carrying habitual resentment toward so many situations and people – thousands of rationalizations as to why I am right and someone else is wrong. I have never been one for New Year’s resolutions, but I hope to venture into 2008 and indeed the rest of my life with renewed perception free of the need to be ‘right’.

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