Being wrong is great: This is why I love it

Being wrong is great. I should know. I’m wrong a lot. So many of my dearest beliefs have turned out to be misguided, completely false, and thoroughly ill-conceived that I’ve given up even being embarrassed about it. I cannot walk around with a perpetually red face so I’ve accepted the only alternative, which is to make peace with humility. It’s okay to be wrong sometimes.

When I was a teenager, I had the particular genius endowed to all teenagers of knowing unerringly that every single thing my parents taught me was incorrect. Most teenagers make a few mistakes, realize their parents know a thing or two, and grow out of that phase. Not me. I’m not a quitter. I continued to arrogantly doubt and question my superiors well into my adult years.

It sounds like a typical generational conflict, as if I were simply a young man itching to mature before he was ready, or thinking the older generation was past their prime. I promise it wasn’t a young vs. old attitude. I also arrogantly doubted and questioned my peers.

The point is, I liked to be right. I could teach a masterclass in the art of how to entrench oneself into a losing belief but never give up arguing in its favor. It requires the refinement of technique and bullheadedness that only arrives with lots of practice. One may be required to abandon any and all facts in order to remain wrong. One may even be required to harm friendships, quarrel endlessly, and gain a reputation for close-mindedness. Those were sacrifices I was, for some reason, willing to make. To me, it was better to be wrong but never admit it rather than go through the humiliation of admitting that I was wrong.

I thought that, by always being right, I was winning. I thought it meant I was intellectually strong and insightful.

I’ve come to realize, however, that my need to always be right was actually a sign of weakness. I lacked self confidence. I had a fragile ego. I was retreating into what I considered a safe position, where I understood everything and could be in control. To have my worldview rearranged would have psychologically damaged me too much. I couldn’t risk it.

Mark Twain may (or may not) have once said, “it’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled.” In my experience, this is true. No one likes to think that an opinion they’ve confidently held, spoken about, and maybe even convinced other people to hold isn’t correct. So, instead of taking in more information and adapting their beliefs, they indulge in informational bias. They only take in carefully curated information that will strengthen their already-existing beliefs.

This happens quite obviously with politics and religion, but I suspect it’s common in every aspect of life down to the smallest details. Whether an argument is high-stakes or completely inconsequential, we like to be right.

The problem, as I’ve come to see it, is that if I go through life always being right and insisting I’m invariably on the winning side, isn’t it true that I’m actually losing?

I’m losing the chance to learn something new, losing the chance to make my beliefs more accurate, losing the chance to expand my worldview. If the need to be right is strong enough and the arguments severe enough, I might also be losing friends and family in the process. I might be going through life acting in all the wrong ways, having all the wrong beliefs, and might miss out on something really great.

For instance, once I finally started to be honest about religion, I quickly came to see how wrong I’d been about Catholicism. As a non-Catholic, I’d caricatured the Church and, for so many years, missed out on her wisdom. Because of this, my spiritual life struggled for much longer than it should have. It was only once I’d admitted I’d been wrong that I was able to discern the real truth and begin to make progress.

This is why I love being wrong. It’s the only way to learn.

What became glaringly obvious to me once I became more comfortable admitting I’m wrong is that I have a lot to learn, and I absolutely love that. I love the fact that the world is so much bigger and more spacious than I’d thought it was. I love that other people have gone from being intellectual adversaries into sources of fascinating conversation.

My approach with any discussion now is not to “win” or “prove I’m right” but, rather, to engage in an enlightening discussion in which we all win together. This isn’t to say I believe absolutely everything I hear, but it does mean I’m interested in listening.

And if it turns out that I have, in fact, been wrong about something, I’m happy to adapt my position. This is why it’s great to be wrong. It’s a chance to win. I should know, I’m wrong a lot.