The joy of being wrong

Last month, my husband and I visited a restaurant in Connaught Place to try their famous ‘thali’ which consists of more than 50 dishes. Heading straight from work, feeling the hunger pangs, we both decided to hog on the biggest thali on the menu. My husband who always jokes about me being a pseudo-foodie thanked me for agreeing to be his partner in crime this time. Of course, I had to agree because I felt ravenously hungry that day.?

We placed our order with the waiter only to hear a big no from him.

“Sorry, but I won’t take your order as I feel you both won’t be able to finish it off,” he refused.

We looked at the menu again and went through all the dishes which were listed with the thali.

“We will be able to finish it. Don’t worry,” we replied.

He refused again.

Was it some kind of a prank or was he throwing a challenge at us? We were getting judged for our appetite? Why would he refuse to serve us?

As the waiter went to serve other customers, my husband started pepping me up. “We will be able to finish it off. He can’t prove us wrong,” my husband said as we watched other customers savour food around us.

In life, whenever someone questions our ideas or beliefs, our first instinct is to deny it. We feel uncomfortable being proven wrong as our inner dictator comes handy policing our thoughts. We can’t be proven wrong; our mind tells us. Our totalitarian ego guards our mind and protects our image and in this process of not being proven wrong, we move closer to fallibility.

Fear or anger becomes our chosen emotion as soon as our beliefs are threatened. Our inner dictator activates our overconfidence and we accept the information that supports our conviction and reject the ideas that question them. We never think about the joy of being wrong.

That day we experienced this joy of being wrong as we devoured rajma chawal at some other restaurant. We were so full with our small meal that having a huge thali with 50 dishes seemed like a distant dream now. The waiter was right. It was impossible for both of us to finish it off and we made a prudent decision to come next time with our family to relish it. We were happy as we decided to be comfortable being wrong and dint indulge in the mouth-watering thali just to waste it later.

In life, seldom we feel the joy of being wrong. We are not receptive when we discover that our beliefs and ideas might not be true. We tend to argue, feel angry, refuse to admit, silence the counter-arguments and smash the door of rethinking. Our stubbornness to accept that we could be wrong makes us even more wrong. But, our acceptance to experience the joy of being wrong puts us on the right path.

That day, we found joy in being proven wrong but my husband also got another anecdote to pull my leg on being called a foodie.