When you say to someone, especially a family member, that they are never going to amount to anything, you are creating either a self-fulfilling prophecy or an adversary, depending on whether the person wants to prove you wrong. Because once someone is motivated by proving others wrong, there is a struggle from then on between them. Prove me wrong?
Here’s the thing, though. You do want to prove others wrong when they are wrong. You should want to do so. But you should prefer that you not have to. It would be better if they told you things that were true, or that you could accept as true without it being necessary to harm yourself for the sake of believing them. If someone tells you that you are going to be good, and you will achieve your dreams when you set your mind to them, this is a truth you can believe.
Scientists say that science is a different matter, and we should never take on faith anything which we cannot subject to disproof. Yet they take the scientific method itself on faith, they do not test it against the alternative. I do not say this to suggest that the scientific method is wrong, I believe it is correct in its own context. But neither belief nor disbelief should be dependent upon science. When you perceive for yourself, you may believe your eyes and ears, even when you can perform no measurement which is verifiable to those who have not themselves perceived the phenomenon you describe.
Fundamentalists are the same as me if I did not rely upon my perceptions, if I denied my eyes and my ears and relied instead upon a book which I did not understand to be the source of all truth. It would be to put a blindfold and ear plugs and wrap myself up like The Who’s Tommy. Fundamentalism is a big problem but one, like science, open to direct experience. For when scientists, who long denied the existence of ball lightning, finally saw for themselves that it was real, they changed their minds. I ask any fundamentalists who read these words to tell me, do you deny a rainbow?
I don’t want to be wrong, do you? So I don’t want to be proven wrong. Prove me right, unless you think I really need to be shown an error. And if I am wrong, I will accept that correction. But my encouragement is meant to say that you have every interest in agreeing, and in seeking a peaceful resolution to your conflicts now. You are all God.
And you are all right too. The question is, do you want to be right?
