Right kind of wrong…
This afternoon I curled up on my bed to begin reading a book by Danielle Steel (I’m on vacation… don’t judge). On a page in the front matter was an excerpt from Andrew Boyd’s Daily Afflictions. I’ve never heard of Andrew Boyd before, but I liked the excerpt, so I did what every tech-savvy individual my age does, and I googled him. This is what the book’s Web page says:
Revolutionizing the best-selling genre, this thinking man’s parody hijacks the format of daily affirmations, but offers a different message: only in paradox, truth; only in darkness, light; only in affliction, affirmation. These “daily afflictions” offer readers inspiration, practical advice, and food for thought, as they navigate the jungle of existential terror that begins anew each day. [...]
Part spiritual autobiography, part ironic meditation, this tragi-comic guide to life’s sublime predicaments will elevate and educate the spirit.
The truth will set you free, Brother Void reminds us, but first it will hurt like hell.
Boyd’s purpose in life, really, is to get people to think about things in a different way… in a different light. His main objective is to: “grab a powerful idea from the culture or the academy, turn it inside-out, put a handle and a grin on it, and send it back out there.”… which is exactly what happened when I read his excerpt in my Danielle Steel book.
We are all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong.
Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. It isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons—your unsolvable problems—the ones that make you who you truly are—that you’re ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you are looking for.
You are looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: the “right” wrong person—someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, “This is the problem I want to have.”
I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way.
—Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflictions
I’m not sure I entirely understand this, but it’s not a new idea. Leann Rimes sings about it in her song “Right Kind of Wrong” when she says, “Loving you isn’t really something I should do/ Shouldn’t wanna spend my time with you/ That I should try to be strong/ But baby you’re the right kind of wrong/ Yeah baby you’re the right kind of wrong.”
I think the main point Boyd is trying to make is that we first must love and accept ourselves… which also is not a new concept. Once you accept your own “wrongness” and learn to live with it, then you can accept someone else’s “wrongness” as “the problem” you want to have… in other words, I can’t handle snoring, but if I fall in love with a man who snores, him snoring next to me and me not being able to sleep because of it is a problem I would then be willing to have (a minor issue, but an example nonetheless).
I feel like there’s so much more I could go into about this, but this post is already long enough as it is… maybe I’ll come up with more tomorrow after I’ve had some time to digest it all…
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