"I am always right"

Do you know someone who is never wrong? I used to be this person. Some would say I still am this person. Touche. I was not the easiest person to be around or have a discussion with. I understand this now that I am more mature. It is definitely a maturity issue, not an age issue. I still have friends now that are like this, and even a sibling who cannot get over being wrong, admitting being wrong or really listening to someone else's opinion on a situation. The problem with this type of person is not that they always are right or have to be right, it is that when they say they are listening to you, they are not. Their mind is completely closed to what you are saying because the only thing they can think about is their side of the issue. With these people, it is always about them. Don't be fooled. They don't care at all about what you have to say. The discussion they are having with you is only to humor you.

It is truly pathetic how uncompromising someone like this can be. The world is black and white. There is only right and wrong; the lines for them never blur. This is not about their strong values; however they will claim it to be or you can't sway them or change them. This is about pure pig-headed stubbornness. Take it from the queen of being not giving an inch when I don't want to. But, after years of losing and looking like an idiot, I realized nobody wins this way.

All good and healthy relationships are not without some discord and disagreement, but anyone who is in a great relationship of any kind (friendship or romantic in nature) knows that relationships are based on compromise. A person has to be malleable or life is going to be a long road of surface relationships . Rigidity is not a good standard for longevity in any relationship. After several recent personal experiences dealing with some very important people in my life who are not quite the extreme in the "I am always right" category but still don't quite understand the meaning of "bend", I have had to really reach deep in inside myself to decide how much I am willing to give to people who continuously refuse to bend at all. It is never healthy in any relationship to always be the one who is the person compromising or feeling like you are.

Here is where I landed. I thought for awhile and decided that no relationship was worth losing over anything so trivial as some of the issues I had faced recently, but that I was hard-pressed to turn the other cheek again. Then, I realized that God has really tasked all of us with being Christians (Christ-like) and that means forgiving even when it hurts me and I really feel I was wronged. It is most like an unconditional love, if you will. Some days it is so hard for me to do this. Most days it is hard for me to forgive someone who has treated me like those in the non-bending situations above. But experience has taught me that not forgiving only hurts me more and then no one wins.

I ask you this, do you understand the meaning of compromise, what it means to "bend", and what happens when you give a little instead of standing firm? Was it all really worth "being right"?