We are always Wrong!

500 years ago, people thought that the earth was flat, and as a matter of fact, some still do. Many believed that the fire was made out of something called phlogiston. When it Said,?you are listening to Radio City 98.9,?some thought that they put a camera to see what they were listening to. I thought that the moon came along with me while I sat back on the bike. Taking this to another level, I thought, that if I thought too much, my brain would get ‘over’.

Well, you see…I was wrong, and all the others were too. Today I hold a set of beliefs and mindset that I perceive as ‘right’. Many years down the line, I might look back and see how wrong I was. Maybe or may not be too. And that will be a good thing because that will mean that I would have grown.

Growth is an endlessly iterative process. When we do something or learn something, we don’t move from a ‘wrong’ version to a ‘right’ version, from black to white… we move from ‘wrong’ to 'lesser wrong' and then to 'even lesser wrong', and so on and so forth.

We are in the process of approaching truth without actually approaching truth and perfection.

In fact, there is nothing called perfection as such. This is bound to the tides of perspective. What might be right or correct for me could be the other way around or maybe even abysmal for you. But then, that’s all part of the game. We inevitably come to differing correctness of the ‘correct’ answers of how we should live and what we should think.

Many people are obsessed with being right about their lives, and they probably never live through it. It ends up being a defence of your perception against another and in all probability a sense of pride in the perspective that one owns, myopic to its probable difference in society.

We create templates of our belief sets and paint them with self-made certainty. This is one piece of art where the meaning is an underlying element of visible materiality. That feeling of certainty about a few things holds us back more than it makes us thrive for others. (It is like wanting to run in a tuxedo!!) It is this certainty that is the central core of personal regression. I don’t walk up to the podium because I believe my dictum is horrendous. I don’t run because I believe I am not fast. I don’t write because I believe I am not creative enough. I am certain about my belief. And that’s where the problem is born. It is this fertile feeling of perception that needs to be aborted. To know that bleeding a person doesn’t heal diseases, that the earth is round, that it revolves around the sun and that the moon doesn’t track my bike.

Instead of being in the pursuit of being right, we can look at how we are wrong and we probably are.

Being wrong brings up the possibility of change, a possibility of growth, and a possibility to be less wrong than before.?

“A curious paradox about change is that when I accept myself as I am, it is only then that I can change”- Carl Rogers

When accept to be wrong, we accept to change... and eventually to relative growth.

There is something weird but true, we don’t actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the hardest and bleak moments in life end up being the most formative and motivating, while some of the most gratifying moments lose their lustre into the shadow of luck and chance, seeping into a desperate desire for validation. All we know at the moment is what makes us smile now and what doesn’t. The beauty of it all would be for us to also smile at things that don’t make us.

Looking back at the horror of the lives of the people 500 years ago, I imagine people 500 years from now. They might laugh at how we define people with grades, colour and language. How we let money rule, how we are afraid of little things as we leap across ‘major achievements’. They might laugh at our superstitions and beliefs, gawk at our cruelty, and study our art, culture, economic implications, political policies, social structures and so on. They might understand things about us that we would never know about ourselves.

Guess what??? They might be wrong too…but less wrong than we are.

A perspective we live for every day, a certainty we water every day and a dream we sleep over every night.

“Certainty is the enemy of growth”-Mark Manson

I am sure the confident rabbit who lost the race would agree with me.

Credits: Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*** by Mark Manson