Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schultz (2010) HarperCollins Publishers: NY
We like to be right. We enjoy it. Being right makes us feel “smart, competent, trustworthy, (p. 3)” aware, and connected. We figure we are usually right and consider being right the normal or natural way to be. We look in our own mind and see rationality. We view our being wrong as rare and strange, and others being wrong as the main problem.
My grandmother Ruby (seated) moved to Kansas City, MO, from the small town of Concordia, KS, to study nursing, even though her parents were convinced she was making a mistake!
We feel more secure with people who agree with us. If others don’t share our viewpoint, we are likely to conclude that they are ignorant of the facts or the reality of the situation. Others make mistakes. Other people’s errors seem to highlight the “types” of people they are: immature, uninformed, ignorant, lazy, and/or lacking moral character.
We feel right in pointing out the flaws in other people’s thinking, though others often take it wrong that we are trying to clear things up for them. When others are set in their viewpoints, they may appear ridiculous in their certainty (p. 164). Realizing that we have been wrong shocks us; we might also be mortified, confused, amused, embarrassed, illuminated, or changed for life.
Some mistakes turn into family stories. In this picture, my son Micah's granddaddy had taken him to show off the new riding mower. When Grandpa started it up in the shed, the sound was so loud that it sent a terrified 4-year old running crying into the house. Only after much reassurance and coaching was our little guy convinced to visit the tractor again, this time to ride, with the promise that granddaddy would never crank it up so loudly for him again!
A pessimistic view of error sees mistakes as bad, something that we need to be better than. If we hold this pessimistic view, we resist admitting any contribution to the problem at hand. Even if we can admit to ourselves that we didn’t see the whole picture correctly, we may find ourselves “too exhausted, sad, or confused to risk feeling worse (or even just feeling more)” (p. 199) to face up to our shortcomings and admit them to others. Instead, we may find ourselves getting stubborn, or defensive, or downright mean. But none of these feelings is that great either, and we don’t make friends with such attitudes (p. 199).
Despite our dislike for mistakes, errors are common—large and small. People used to think the world was flat and that the earth was the center of the solar system. On a day-to-day basis, I miss key information when I don’t pay good enough attention. Plus, when there is a lot going on it is easy to miss things. Some mistakes are no big deal. Some affect a lot of people.
In this photo, Micah (at the second row far right in the white shirt) had been very cranky and difficult to get ready for the photo. Later that night, he registered a fever of 104 F! I felt bad for not telling earlier that he was sick but instead fussing at him to cooperate better. (I am in the second row, holding baby Luke in his red pants and blue striped sweater.)
Let’s, therefore, look closely at what can happen as we experience being wrong. First, we are knocked off our high horse. In many cultures, our experience of being wrong causes us to “lose face.” We may want to crawl into a cave or otherwise disappear. In a culture that values rationality over emotion, we find that our capacity to tolerate error depends on our capacity to tolerate such emotions as dismay, foolishness, guilt, shame, or loss (p. 199).
My mom felt terrible when she opened the door and our new beautiful boxer dog Baron ran out and into the street, where it was hit by a car and killed.
Our ability to benefit from error depends on resisting the urge to not face up to our part in it. Wisdom is the attitude gained from experience that no one knows everything. All of us screw up, misunderstand, and misjudge. An optimistic view of error sees it as a resource for fascination, excitement, hilarity, and delight. Error, because it indicates a “false” reality, also includes dreams and goals, imagination and entertainment, creativity and surprise. “Forming theories about the world, testing them, then figuring out where we went wrong—is how children play and live in a world of great newness to them” (p. 291). To feel like a kid again is to experience the world as new and learn about it by playing.
These animals seemed so big at the time! Here I am behind my brother Martin.
As we identify and correct our misconceptions, we become less rigid, more functional, and more forgiving of ourselves and others. When we admit that we were in error (more typical of women’s speech than men’s), we find others defending us, telling us what we did right rather than emphasizing our errors.
By seeing ourselves as able to be wrong, we improve how we think, empathize, decide, imagine, plan, and act. When being wrong means seeing what is not, then any of us who see something “not as it is but as it could be” we begin to act like leaders, strategists, visionaries, and artists. It was George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright and founder of the London School of Economics who said, "Some men see things as they are and say why - I dream things that never were and say why not."
When we don’t face up to our wrongness, we miss out on it. If the ability to admit that we are wrong depends on our ability to tolerate emotion, it is because being wrong, like grieving or falling in love, is fundamentally an emotional experience. When we were tiny, our survival depended on the ability of our care-takers to get “us” right: responding appropriately to our cries of hunger, etc. As we grew older, we were no less fond of being understood. In fact, it is the feeling of being understood—gotten—that is the hallmark of being in love (p. 250). We can learn to live with disagreement and error as long as we feel esteemed and loved (p. 272).
Here I am with my dissertation professor, Dr. James F. Cashman.His management specialty was the importance of supportive relationships among leaders and members at work. He was one of the kindest people I ever met, and I felt secure going to him and discussing my confusion and uncertainty.
Finding ourselves mistaken, even in our expectations of what was going to happen, we step beyond our limited idea that we are most certainly right. We see ourselves as more and other than we had known ourselves to be. While this might feel humiliating, we are growing! We learn we need to listen. We might even risk laughing at ourselves. Being wrong can be funny!
Maybe not funny at the time, our mistakes can later make for great stories. Here, my brother Martin is showing off the results of a miscalculation he made on the high school football field.
As we grow older, we may restrict our exposure to new settings, until we travel! “The further afield you venture, the more you set yourself up for confusion, surprise, and the violation of your beliefs” (p. 292). We travel to feel like a kid again: to experience the world as new and learn about it by playing.
By being willing to imagine seeing ourselves as wrong, we improve how we think, empathize, decide, imagine, plan, and act. When being wrong means seeing what is not, then any of us who see something not as it is but as it could be are playing in what the author calls the margin of error. Error, she goes on to note, comes from the same root word as the Sanskrit word arsati meaning "flows,” the Spanish word ir, “to go,” and the Latin word errer, "to travel or wander, as did the knight errant and traveling minstrel.
Here I am in San Diego, which felt like a foreign land to this Midwesterner-turned Southerner!
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