“Look how beautifully those purple flowers are,” she said.

I looked and only saw blue flowers.

I thought, they are beautiful, but they are blue, not purple.

As I prepared to prove the fallacy of her purple and the rightness of my blue, I felt the tiniest bit of tightness in my soul. The muscles in my neck and shoulders tightened and my jaw began to clench. I felt as though I was preparing for battle. She is wrong, I thought, and it’s my job to correct her.

Suddenly, it dawned on me that this was the source of my sore back and neck.

Oh my!

Do I really need to be right all the time? Do I tighten up each time I sense a conflict?

Maybe I do. Maybe I have a need to be right and it shows up as resistance and tightness in my body.

Maybe I can accept her view of the flowers as valid as mine. Maybe the color is not important at all.

I replied, “Yes, those are beautiful flowers,” as I looked over and admired her rose-colored sunglasses.