Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,***********************
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn’t make any sense.
There will always be instances when you feel you are right and someone else is wrong. And you will be upset. How you deal with emotions will have a bearing on how the situation plays out. Or as Aristotle put it:
Anyone can become angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, as the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not easy.
It isn't about being right or wrong, but about having the opportunity to learn or teach. If you become emotional and angry you will trigger emotions in the other person which block the ability to learn; you deprive him or her. Those instincts block the rational part of the brain. It's okay to use instincts to initiate, but pause and allow the rational side to catch up.
As Daniel Goleman puts it in his book Emotional Intelligence, "Emotions are contagious. We transmit and catch moods from each other in what amounts to a subterranean economy of the psyche in which some encounters are toxic, some nourishing. We catch feelings from one another as though they were some kind of social virus."
Even if you "win" the argument, what are the trailing effects? The perturbations you create in the universe don't dissipate into thin air. Everything is connected with sensitivity. Will you think about it tomorrow and feel bad? Will you see this person again? Does that person know someone you work with? Will you need something later in the day or down the line? Will you offer them the opportunity to learn so they don't make mistakes with other people?
Or perhaps turn it around on yourself. Could have done something differently in the first place to avoid the confrontation? If you lived it over again from the beginning, what would you do differently to avoid the confrontation?