Legally Right vs. Being Right

When the Art of Life Is Co-Created Through Shared Visions and Agreements

There are moments in life when our belief in systemsequality, fairness, justice, unity. Quietly fails us.

Not because the systems don’t work as designed, but because they were never built to hold the full complexity of being human.

It’s funny, in a way, being birthed into this life as a Libra. An archetype associated with balance and justice only to learn that harmony isn’t something you think your way into. It’s something you experience by living both sides of duality. Both polarities of energy. Both ends of the scale.

Balance isn’t neutral.
It’s integrated.

I’ve stood on both sides of this divide.

And there is a third layer that cannot be bypassed or spiritualized away.

There were times when I didn’t just benefit from systems or stand justified by agreements. There were times I stole. Times I cheated. Times I took for my own short-term pleasure, my own gain, my own desired outcomes fully aware that I was prioritizing myself over the impact on others.

No paperwork to hide behind.
No authority to blame.
No misunderstanding to soften it.

Just justified choice.

And responsibility.

There were times when the art of life was co-created through shared visions and agreements.

Art was made together. Releases were signed. There was alignment in the moment, mutual consent, mutual creation, mutual understanding of what was being expressed. We met in resonance. We said yes to the same vision.

And yet, later, when those same people encountered feelings of exposure, vulnerability, or regret, the meaning of that shared moment changed. What once felt aligned became uncomfortable. The experience was reinterpreted through a new lens.

Legally, I was in the clear.

But internally, something fractured.

I felt horrible. I carried the weight. I suffered not because the law demanded it, but because my body and conscience were teaching me something deeper. Being legally right did not bring peace.

That was one polarity.

Then there were the moments I stood on the other side.

Times when I was stolen from, exploited, betrayed.

Moments where I had every legal right to seek justice. To sue. To punish. To win.

And yet, in those moments, I discovered a deeper justice one that didn’t require another person to lose for me to heal.

I found compassion.
I found understanding.
I found clarity.

Not by denying harm, but by refusing to let harm define who I became.

Justice, I learned, isn’t always about enforcing a system. Sometimes it’s about restoring unity within yourself. About choosing how you intend to relate to others not as they should be, but as they are, and as you are becoming.

Every system of belief is duality playing itself out in shared relationship of presence.

Belief, by nature, creates contrast this and that, right and wrong, mine and yours, red and blue. Duality isn’t the problem; it’s how life reveals itself. The problem begins when belief is mistaken for absolute truth rather than a lens through which experience is interpreted.

Perception and perspective don’t inherently separate us. They only divide us when we cling to them more tightly than the shared experience we are living together. When perspective becomes identity, relationship collapses into comparison.

How and why we communicate reveals which part of our nature is leading.

When communication is rooted in our inclusive nature, it carries curiosity, humility, and accountability. It leaves room for what was missed missed steps, missed information, missed understanding without turning those gaps into weapons.

When communication is driven by conditioning, it hardens into defense, certainty, and hierarchy. It seeks to be right rather than present. It prioritizes position over connection.

This is where the polarities meet.

Legally right and being right.
Power and restraint.
Judgment and compassion.

However you label an experience right or wrong, justified or unfair, lesson or loss, up or down, the meaning isn’t in the label. It’s in what we integrate from what we lived and grew through from this middle vantage point.

Harmony doesn’t live in verdicts.
It doesn’t live in victories or temporary defeats.

Harmony exists in relationship with self, with others, within the present moment.

What happened was.
What presented itself is.
And what grows from it depends on how we choose to walk forward.

I’ve also learned this:

Those who believe they are above others will many times either offer a hand up or push you further down to justify their righteousness or place in hierarchy.

Privilege and entitlement eventually meet humility.
They always do.

You don’t have to prove who you are.
You don’t have to defend your humanity.

Have faith.
Allow time to reveal the truth of how you walk.
Let others continue pretending and performing they are higher than human experience, if they must.

Truth doesn’t rush.
Integrity doesn’t shout in vain.
And unity doesn’t need permission from the external law and authority to exist.

It lives quietly, powerfully right here.
In this moment.

Every moment we’ve experienced, we’ve both won and lost depending on how we keep score. Every story can be framed as victory or defeat, success or failure, justice or injustice. And yet beneath all of it, something more fundamental remains.

We’ve all been given the same rare worthiness and privilege: to live another moment.

We haven’t only survived what we’ve lived through. We’ve been initiated by it.

Initiated into deeper awareness.
Initiated into greater capacity.
Initiated into the possibility of thriving not by avoiding hardship, but by integrating it.

Life doesn’t just test us.
It invites us.
Again and again.

And each moment we meet it consciously, we don’t merely endure we become more than we were before.

Chris “Yellow Owl” Albaugh

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