There are always so afraid of doing wrong because they don't see their value; remain eternal students because only in school one can tell them what is right, and they know how to get good grades. But in life you can't do that.
All the people who are afraid of making mistakes, who want to be right, can't function at well. But there is only one condition on which you can be sure you are right when you try to do something; to do right There is one condition alone which would permit you to be relatively sure whether you are right or wrong. That is afterwards. When you do something, you never can be sure — you only see if it is right by how it turns out. Anybody who must be right can’t move much, can't make any decision, because we can never be sure that we are right. To be right is a false premise and it usually leads to the misuse of this right.
Have you any idea how many people are torturing their friends and their families because they must be right — and unfortunately, they are? There is nothing worse than the person who always has the right argument. There is nothing worse than a person who always is right morally. And he shows it.
This right morally and right logically is very often an offense to human relationships. To be right, you sacrifice kindness, patience; if you want, tolerance. No, out of this desire for rightness we don't get peace, we don't get cooperation; we merely end up by trying to give the others the idea of how good we are when we can't even fool ourselves. No, to be human does not mean to be right, does not mean to be perfect. To be human means to be useful, to make contributions, not for oneself, but others. To take what there is and make the best out of it. It requires faith in oneself and faith and respect for others. But that has a prerequisite; that we can't be overly concerned with their shortcomings, we have no respect, neither for ourselves nor for others.
We must learn the art, and to realize that we are good enough as we are 0 because we never will be better, regardless of how much more we may know, how much more skill we may acquire, how much status or money or what-have- you. If we can't make peace with ourselves as we are, we never will be able to make peace with ourselves. And this requires the courage to be imperfect; requires the realization that I am no angel, that I am not superhuman, that I make mistakes, that I have faults; but I am pretty good because I don't have to be better than the others. Which is a tremendous belief. If you accept just being yourself, the devil of vanity, the golden calf of my superiority vanishes. If we learn to function, to do our best regardless of what it is, out of the enjoyment of the contributing.