“The pendulum of the mind does not swing between right and wrong; it swings between meaning and meaninglessness.” — Carl Jung
The moment we label something as “right” or “wrong,” we eliminate the space required to truly understand it. Yet everything exists through its opposite. Something that is not right is not always wrong; and something that is wrong does not mean it can never be right in certain circumstances.
One of the mind’s greatest tasks is to try to understand. But more often than not, when our mind encounters a judgment, it falters, because the function of understanding has been taken away from it. Understanding requires clarity, calm, and time. The mind enjoys multiplicity, multidimensional thinking, and questioning. By contrast, the right–wrong plane is one-dimensional; it is reactive and rigid. It is a verdict delivered hastily; often one we believe we must deliver.
Running a red light is wrong; crossing on green is right. Littering is wrong; throwing trash into a bin is right. Lying is wrong.
But is lying always wrong?
Before this question can even fully form in our minds, a voice rises inside us: “You lied! Wrong!”
The internalized echo of an external voice, loud and high-pitched, fills our mind. Guilt follows, and the punishment scale is activated. This relentless inner voice moves so fast that there is no time to hear the smaller voices pushed to the edges of the mind. Yet perhaps, somewhere, a faint voice is trying to say, “Wait a minute… I lied, but why did I lie? Listen for a second.”
Moving forward without making room for that voice is an unfair intervention into the mind. When a person gives themselves no opportunity, creates no ground for making meaning, they are most unjust to themselves. Release the mind’s pendulum; let it carry you back and forth between meaning and meaninglessness. Let it turn things over, lose its rhythm, disrupt its own habits as it pleases.
If there is a “wrong,” understand it so you can take responsibility for it.
If a person only stands by their truths, don’t their mistakes become orphaned?
From a very young age, we are raised with a fear of “making mistakes”: Don’t make an error, don’t be misunderstood. But let me be misunderstood; so I have a chance to explain myself.
If I am always understood correctly, I will be left without the words to describe my wrongs.
To question our mistakes with appetite is one of the greatest gifts we can give our minds. The mind comes alive only when it engages with the shades between black and white; this is how it sheds its doubts and fears.
One of the greatest traumas of my student years was this rule:
Three wrong answers cancel out one correct one.
As if it weren’t enough that wrong answers destroyed themselves, we grew up fearing that they would also take our correct answers down with them.
A “wrong-answer monster,” programmed to swallow our truths, followed us like a shadow.
What a cruel rule this is. Why was it created? To prevent people from passing exams by guessing. Yet if someone can calculate probabilities well enough to pass a 100-question exam by guessing, I take my hat off to them. That’s not their flaw; it’s the exam designer’s problem. But what does the rule say? “If you make a mistake, I won’t just take away the points for that question—I’ll also take away one of your correct answers.”
Have you noticed the mental imprint of this?
When you make a mistake, you will also pay for it with your truth.
You ran a red light three times and got three tickets; that’s not enough, so I’m also taking away your right to cross on green. I’m adding that to your list of errors too.
You will pay for your reds with your greens.
If you threw trash on the ground three times, I’ll take the trash you put into the bin, pull it back out, and throw it onto the street for you.
Ever since I made room in my mind for questioning meaning versus meaninglessness instead of right versus wrong, my mind’s pendulum; though it sometimes stumbles; moves along with me. Of course, I’m not saying there are no rights and wrongs; everything exists through its opposite. But because the sharp edge of right–wrong judgment can hurt, I suggest we treat our minds a little more gently.
Let’s place parentheses next to what is right, and parentheses next to what is wrong. Let’s fill those parentheses not in haste, but with care and ownership. Will we always punish wrongs with rights? Isn’t it time we also tested our rights through our wrongs?
How lucky I am that by this age, I have accumulated enough wrongs to distinguish my rights.
And what’s more; every three rights brought one wrong.
Dr. Ayşen Darcan, New York
www.aysendarcan.com
dr.aysence @instagram
ABOUT ME:
I have spent much of my life listening; sometimes to what is spoken, sometimes to what trembles just beneath the words. Trained as a cross-cultural psychologist, educated at BoğaziçiUniversity and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and shaped by decades of work in private practice and counseling centers in New York and beyond, I have learned that human beings are made of relationships: with each other, with where we come from, with what we inherit, and with what we choose to create.
My work with students, adults, and couples is rooted in a relational understanding of the psyche; one that honors culture, family, history, and the quiet emotional patterns that move between us. I move between psychology and art, between meaning and play, between what wounds us and what gently repairs us. I believe healing does not arrive only through insight or effort, but also through connection, beauty, creativity, and the courage to stay soft in a complicated world. Sometimes it comes through conversation, sometimes through color, sometimes through silence and sometimes through the quiet miracle of laughing together. If there is anything I continue to trust, after all these years of listening, it is this: when we meet each other with presence and a little playfulness, something in us remembers how to breathe again.
more about Dr. Aysen Darcan can be found:
www.aysendarcan.com
dr.aysence @instagram
