Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Be principled in what you can control, and flexible with what you can't

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Sometimes, being too principled (needing to "make things right") can get in the way of flourishing because it prevents you from accepting complicated people & situations and "going with the flow”. Of course, sometimes cutting out people and situations is exactly what you need to do, but many people are often too quick to do this. It’s like in basketball when the ref makes a bad call and you protest to the ref instead of getting back on defense, and then you refuse to keep playing because on ‘principle’ the ref made a bad call and now the game needs to stop until the bad call is corrected. Basketball is actually a good analogy because there’s this common phrase, “ball don’t lie” which is meant to imply a just world where the injustices even themselves out overtime. As in, if a bad foul is called, the person is supposed to then miss the free throw to even out the bad call. Well, as anyone who’s said “Ball don’t lie” knows, this isn't what usually happens. Ball is a pathological liar. Cosmic debts usually don’t settle. Being too “principled” to move past someone’s mistake or a bad call or the general unfairness of the game will bog you down. You have to act as though you forgot it happened. There's no person who's successful who hasn't felt burned before or had messy working relationships they had to forgive, or at least forget. I put principles in quotes above because what people are are calling principles in these contexts are often grudges or demands or even a need for revenge. They have to settle this cosmic debt, they can’t let sleeping dogs die. They can’t handle the cognitive dissonance of accepting something unfair. But people are complicated. They mess up, they betray you. Situations are complicated. Everyone thinks they’ve been treated unfairly in something. Keeping score and needing reconciliation will make you resentful, because the ball lies all the time. If you stopped playing basketball every time the ball lied, you’d stop playing completely. And if you avoided everyone who treated you unfairly at some point, you’d probably just be alone. You’d better hope they give you the benefit of the doubt for your mistakes, too.

The most effective people are principled in their actions and in what they can control, but flexible in how they see other people & situations that are out of their control—and are able to adopt whatever mindset leads to the most flourishing, even if that means eating humble pie or accepting flawed people or uncomfortable truths.