I listened to Kathryn Schulz's talk about the gifts that emerge from being wrong.
She notes interestingly that the
feeling of being wrong and the feeling of being right feel the same. It’s not until we know that we are wrong that the feeling of wrongness overtakes us. And it’s this fear of being wrong
that freezes us into doing nothing, or sends us to blaming someone else, or
lashing out sideways because we have been duped into a corner and hurt.
We’ve been taught that being wrong is wrong. We aren’t
taught that being wrong teaches us something. That we will be wrong, and we
will be right, and that is the nature of life.
I had a poster of a dog swimming in my old classroom, with
Picasso’s quote:
I am always doing
that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Or: I allow
myself to be wrong, so I can learn.
I thought it was a good
mantra for a classroom. Of course, they say we teach what we need to learn.
Ahem. Ok, I suck at being wrong.
