“I was right” has justified a lot of bad behavior.
Maybe somebody really did lie to us. Maybe they treated us unfairly. Maybe our version of the argument was completely accurate. We can be right about what happened and still be wrong about what we did next.
That distinction matters in Step Eight. We aren’t being asked to pretend other people never harmed us. We are looking for our own actions. Did I retaliate? Did I gossip? Did I deliberately say something I knew would hurt? Did I use being right as permission to behave however I wanted?
Recovery has taught us that being right and doing right are not always the same thing. Sometimes our insistence on being right keeps us chained to something that happened years ago. We keep presenting the evidence, waiting for a verdict that finally makes us feel better. Step Eight offers another way. We can acknowledge what happened and still ask the question that actually has the power to change us: What was my part?
Have I ever used being right to justify something I knew was wrong?
