“
Lomeli said in a low voice, “Did I do the right thing, Vincent? What is your opinion?”
“No one who follows their conscience ever does wrong, Your Eminence. The consequences may not turn out as we intend; it may prove in time that we made a mistake. But that is not the same as being wrong. […]”
”
[from the book Conclave by Robert Harris]
I don’t believe in God, especially not the Catholic or Christian one or any monotheistic version; and I’m not sure what I think about the concept of “conscience”. But I love the quoted dialogue from the book Conclave by Robert Harris. I love how Vincent (a.k.a. Cardinal Benítez) separates the concepts of “mistake” vs. “doing right or wrong”. I love the idea that one can “make a mistake while still doing the right thing” or “make a mistake without it necessarily being the wrong thing”.
I like this way of putting it because, to me, it disrupts the binary of right vs. wrong, the binary of there being only two options, one being right — and thus, good or preferable or ideal or the one to follow — and one being wrong — and thus, bad or regrettable or shameful or to be avoided.
I also like the idea that something we do at some point in time, seeming “good” or “right” then, may prove in time to be a mistake. “Time will tell”. We don’t always have all the necessary information to make a decision and we choose what seems, or feels, “best” to us in that moment. That might, in time, turn out to not be “the best option”, or to be something that needs to be reconsidered, even changed completely. A mistake. Fine, we’re human, fallible. But a mistake isn’t necessarily wrong. And something that seems “good” today might turn out to be “bad” tomorrow, in hindsight, when we have more knowledge.
Maybe I like this passage, this viewpoint, so much because it’s bringing me some reprieve from my own condemnation.
At the end of grad school I got together with a guy who was in our common group of friends and stayed with him for seven years, basing some big life decisions on the relationship between us. In many ways, that was a mistake.
Last spring, for three months I tried to have a sexual/romantic relationship with a transgirl before ending it because I realized it wasn’t what I wanted. In some ways, that relationship also was a mistake.
And probably hooking up with the gender-expansive gay guy from the chorus a few months ago was also a mistake — and one for which I’ve been beating myself up a lot lately.
These relationships or situations were all mistakes, probably. But they were not “wrong”. I didn’t “do the wrong thing”, neither by initiating or staying in those relationships, nor by ending them. I made mistakes and learned from them. I made mistakes because I was learning. I was experimenting, exploring, getting to know new aspects of the world and of myself. And as I was doing so, I tried out different things, and some turned out to not be “good fits” for me or to be things that I wouldn’t have done if I had been at my baseline, feeling really well (i.e. comfortable, confident) with myself.
Those relationships or situations proved in time to be mistakes. But I wasn’t necessarily wrong about trying them. I learned from them, and hopefully won’t make the same mistakes again in the future. And in the meantime, hopefully I can extend myself some forgiveness for my mistakes.
The Little Prince and the Fox 