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Why We Remember the One Wrong—and Forget the Hundred Rights”


Greetings, fellow traveler—

Come closer, not with your ears, but with the stillness behind them.

Let me offer you a riddle, not to be solved, but to be held gently in the palm of your awareness.

Why is it that we can offer someone, 

a hundred good deeds...

a hundred kindnesses...

 quiet gestures...

unseen sacrifices…

And yet, one misstep—just one—becomes the focal point of their gaze?

Why does one wrong cast a longer shadow than a hundred lights ever could?

Where do those hundred rights go?

Do they evaporate like mist under the harsh sun of judgment?

Or is the forgetting not in the heart, but in the architecture of the mind itself?

Built to Fear...

Not to Be Fair...

You see, the human mind is not crafted for fairness.

It was not sculpted in temples of justice but forged in the wild, where survival was the only virtue.

In the wilderness of our evolution, it was never the beauty of the sunset that saved us.

It was the rustle in the grass.

A threat remembered was a life preserved.

And so, we evolved to cling to the negative—to catalog the danger, magnify the flaw, and obsess over the crack in the pattern.

This is known as the negativity bias.

It’s why your mind replays that one awkward comment.

Why does a single betrayal echo louder than a decade of loyalty?

Why criticism pierces deeper than praise ever soothes.

Why your inner voice often whispers what’s wrong long before it celebrates what’s right.

It’s not cruelty—it’s conditioning.

To the subconscious, one wrong equals risk.

And risk must be judged, contained… and if needed, punished.

The Superego: 

Inner Judge, 

Outer Projection.

Freud named it the superego—the internal prosecutor that doesn’t seek truth, but retribution.

It’s not content with understanding.

It wants someone to blame.

And here’s the twist:

Sometimes, the person we blame…

is ourselves.

But the ego is clever.

It cannot bear to sit in its own shadow, so it projects it outward.

We see in others what we most reject in ourselves.

Their flaws become mirrors—polished by pain—reflecting back our disowned selves.

The harshness we place on another?

Often, it’s the harshness we cannot bear within.

The Ego’s Sleight of Hand

The ego—our illusion-maker, our fragile guardian—

has its own dark magic:

If I find fault in you, I don’t have to face what’s broken in me.

It’s a trick of deflection, an ancient game of spiritual avoidance.

Pointing fingers outward spares us the burden of looking inward.

And so one wrong becomes a magnifying glass,

amplifying not just an action, but a person’s entire identity.

A crack becomes a canyon.

A moment becomes a monument.

The Mind That Questions Is the One That Condemns

Now, lean in, dear friend, for here lies the riddle within the riddle:

Is the mind asking this question… the same mind that can never answer it?

Like a mirror reflecting itself.

Like a flame trying to touch its own fire.

Can the judge ever be the defendant?

Perhaps the purpose isn’t to solve this mystery—

But to witness it...

To observe the mind’s loops and lashes.

To notice its patterns… without feeding them.

To breathe space between reaction and awareness.

In that space, a door appears.

The Doorway to Grace.

And so, what do we do with this understanding?

We forgive...

Not just the other,

But the frightened, pattern-driven parts of ourselves.

We remember:

One wrong doesn’t erase a hundred rights.

Just as one cloud doesn’t end the sky.

The lens through which we see others is often blurred by our own wounds.

So we soften the lens.

We shift the focus.

We learn to balance the scales—not by denying the negative,

But by reclaiming the positive we so easily forget.

We choose grace.

We train the mind to see the whole—

The fracture and the form.

The mistake and the meaning.

The Final Whisper

So the next time someone falters…

Or you yourself fall short…

Pause...

Breathe...

Be still...

Observe...

Don’t let the mind sprint into judgment.

Instead, gently ask:

 “What am I really seeing?”

“And what in me is reacting?”

Because sometimes, the flaw we see in another

is simply a sacred signpost—pointing us to an unhealed part within.

Let us then become the light that remembers.

not faultfinders.

Let us hold the mirror with compassion.

And when we gaze into it…

Let us remember the hundred lights.

For the one, passing shadow.

With heart and humility,

Your fellow explorer of the human mystery. 


Visit nycfitliving.com to begin your journey toward a deeper understanding and to cultivate genuine happiness and well-being through fitness, mindfulness, and stress management


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