More than once this week, someone has rather haughtily asked me, "Have you ever stopped and considered that you might be wrong?"
The answer is "Yes." If you're under 70, the answer is "Yes, and fuck you."
Look, if you've made the mistakes that I've made, then like me, you'd never stop asking yourself if you were wrong. And not just about life-changing decisions. About everything. Should I have eaten this or something else for lunch? Should I say what I'm thinking? Is there a better way to say it? Is it right? Even if I've seen it before, is it still right? Is it right now?
I tend to think I'm smart because I can figure things out, usually fairly quickly. But my mantra is "I don't know anything." Even things I do "know," I tend to check before relying on them. Even though I know the key opens all the padlocks, I lock them and unlock them with the right key just to be sure. I read through recipes I've made five dozen times. I look up way more information than most people because I'm constantly double-checking my own beliefs, because I don't know everything. Some days I wonder if I know anything.
It's far more unusual to pause and consider that I might not be wrong. There are a few things that I know, having been around for a while, but I usually verify them anyway.
Now, that said, when I do know something, I am entirely uninterested in proving that I know it. I've seen a lot of things, and every now and then someone will tell me that something I've seen didn't happen when he wasn't there, or that something I've done can't be done, or that something I've seen go wrong can't go wrong, and so forth along those lines.
When that happens, I'll usually say what I know, and (if I can) why I know it. Sometimes I know things because of experience with other boys that I need to keep confidential, and sometimes saying "I was in the room when that happened" would tell a boy more about my identity than I want (I would never tell such stories in a public chat room).
But beyond that, I learned about 20 years ago that no matter what you know, there's always someone who needs to feel he can prove you wrong. He doesn't care if you were in the room when the event happened; he'll tell you that it happened completely differently. And I'll even consider that, because my own memory is no more foolproof than anyone else's.
But yeah, it's not about memory. It's about someone wanting to score points by taking down the "expert." And don't get me wrong, this is rarely what's actually going on—but it does happen. And I've seen it enough times that when someone starts challenging me on something I actually truly know to be true, I just stop participating in the argument.
There's just no point. It's like someone trolling on the Internet, or arguing that 2+2 is 5. If you explain that it's 4 and they keep arguing, you're not going to convince them. You can either keep trying, and get nowhere (except more upset) or you can just let them be wrong. After many years of experience, I've ultimately learned that letting them be wrong is almost always the right choice. It's not like you can do anything about it anyway.
So, yeah. When I do know something, I know it. And I'll tell you if it comes up. But if you insist I'm wrong on something I actually do know, I'm not going to argue it. Life's too short. But this only works because I am constantly second guessing myself, in ways no one (including me) really wants to do.
[Update: Or, as Winston Churchill once told Stalin, "When I make a statement of facts within my knowledge I expect it to be accepted." Well said, Sir Winston.]
So yes, I've considered I might be wrong, probably long before you considered it. And I'm perfectly willing to be wrong, because most things aren't of life-or-death importance and if I'm wrong, it just doesn't matter. If you think you look good in a brown sweatshirt and I don't, who cares what I think? You asked me, I told you, you disagree, that's that. We can't both be right but in the big scheme of things, who's right doesn't matter much—so I'll stop arguing that, too.
What do you care, anyway?
