I want to share a “thought experiment” with you. What would you do if one morning you woke up and realized that everything you believed about life, love, liberty, justice, aging, politics, and even religion was wrong? Not just slightly off but fundamentally flawed.
That thought crossed my mind recently. Over the years, I have been very opinionated. This morning, I told a good friend that assigning motives to people was ridiculous. We all want explanations why people do dangerous, criminal or simply dumb things. However, the motives that we spew out might as well be as valid as Chinese fortune cookies. There are dozens of possibilities why someone has done something.
The recent subway stabbing and murder is a good example. Why did the perp murder the young girl? He had never seen her before. He did not know her. He had no reason to kill her. But kill her he did. Why? Go ahead and speculate if you like but you can speculate all day, and you may never know the true reason or even if he had a reason. Do you remember the famous line “The Devil made me do it.” That is as good an explanation as any.
The more I thought about this question of belief and knowledge, the more my head began to spin. I felt like I had vertigo. All the experiences, books, teachers, and years of reflection that have shaped my worldview suddenly seemed like they might be a house of cards. It was unsettling—terrifying, even. I who believe in facts, data, rational thinking and logic. What if I am wrong? Is there any value to doubt everything? Ecclesiastes says that “In much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow”
But after reflecting on it, I realized something: this is what growth feels like. Let me break this idea of growth down into some concepts that have merit on the subject.
The Shock of Doubt:
Beliefs are comfortable. They provide a framework for navigating life, a lens through which we interpret meaning. To suddenly question them feels like losing gravity. But doubt, in its purest form, isn’t a threat. It’s an invitation.
I thought of people I admire—Deming, Aristotle, Kahneman, Sagan—men who thrived on challenging assumptions. They didn’t fear being wrong; they saw it as a step toward being less wrong.
The Emotional Reckoning:
There is grief in realizing cherished ideas might not hold water. Some beliefs are tied to memories, mentors, or moral choices we’ve made. Questioning them can feel like betrayal. Worse, questioning them can bring us guilt. Guilt that our pig-headed stubborn beliefs have labeled and judged other people. Guilt that not only were we wrong but that we sentenced other people based on false ideas and information.
But emotions are honest teachers. The discomfort signals that we’re brushing against something important—something worth reexamining. For instance, what if I am wrong about trump? What if he is really ushering in a new and better age for America. What if his policies will help Americans and even the entire world live better lives? What if I came back to this earth 100 years from now only to find the world more prosperous, egalitarian and peaceful than any time in history? How would I feel about my stubborn insistence that trump is the not only the worst president in history but evil? A man who will destroy democracy and bring untold misery to millions of people. Am I strong enough to even entertain this possibility?
Breaking vs. Building:
In moments of doubt, it’s tempting to throw everything out and start over. Sort of like “Zero Based Budgeting” or what my wife does when she finds a mistake in her knitting. I do not know how many times Karen has torn apart something that she has worked weeks on. All because she found a dropped stitch or some other knitting or quilting error. Her tenacity always boggles my mind.
Yet wisdom isn’t built from demolition; it comes from integration. It comes from standing on the back of genius who came before us. Plato built on Socrates. Aristotle built on Plato. Deming built on Shewhart. Wisdom comes from assimilating and reshaping, adding new layers and molding something even more perceptive and sublime than what went before. Deming always said that “Experience without Theory teaches nothing.” I added to his message the thought that “Theory without Experience teaches nothing.” It is a Yin/Yang of reality.
Isaac Newton in a letter to Robert Hooke wrote, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”.
I realize that being “wrong” doesn’t mean that my life has been wasted or misguided. It means I now have a chance to weave new threads into the tapestry that I’ve been creating for decades. I wonder what will happen to the 2000 threads or blogs that are now part of this tapestry. Perhaps to my friends, my dedication and even fixation on my blogs are trivial pursuits. I am sure some of my friends are bugged when I say, “Did you read my blog” or “I just wrote a blog on that subject.” But my blogs have become part of the thread that I weave through my life. I expect to write a blog the day or even hour before I die.
Aging into Humility:
Humility is the opposite of pride. While pride is often derided, humility always gets applauded, at least among philosophers and theologians. In the world of politics, humility is never an asset. Politicians pride themselves on taking credit for saving the world one minute after they are elected. Can you imagine any politician aging into humility? Donald Trump as a humble person?
One of the gifts of age is perspective. I’ve lived long enough to see entire social movements rise and fall, “truths” overturned, and science rewrite itself. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that being wrong is inevitable. What matters is how gracefully we grow from it. The title of my website is Aging Capriciously. The definition of “capricious” is:
“One who is prone to sudden, unpredictable, and unexplainable changes in their attitude, behavior, or decisions, often based on whim rather than reason or logic. They are often described as impulsive, erratic, and fickle.”
If you are going to be capricious, you had better learn some humility. I liked the word capricious for my blog since it blessed my desire and need to change my mind. To be wrong, to be fickle. I have always and perhaps too pridefully believed that I was blessed with a consistency that would rival Lt Commander Spock on the starship Enterprise. Spock was erratic in my mind since he had an earthling mother. I was a motherless child or at least felt that way growing up. I could not be wrong, or I would be punished by a dad who would have cowered Zeus.
Humility doesn’t mean shrinking—it means making space for change. It means admitting that liberty, justice, and love are too vast for any one lifetime to fully comprehend. If I am born again and I have the opportunity to start another blog, I will call it Aging Into Humility. Maybe the second time around, I will get it right.
A Call to Curiosity:
So, I ask myself—and you—what if we welcomed the possibility of being wrong? What if, instead of clinging to certainty, we embraced curiosity? A good friend of mine had a sign over his desk which read “There are no mistakes, only lessons to be learned.” I took this quote to heart and have tried to use it as a guide for my life.
Maybe the purpose of a long life isn’t to arrive at a final truth, but to remain open, to keep asking, to keep revising. If that’s true, then perhaps being “wrong” isn’t a failure at all. Perhaps it’s proof that we’re still alive, still learning, still becoming.
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. — —”Old Man’s Advice to Youth: ‘Never Lose a Holy Curiosity.'” LIFE Magazine (2 May 1955) p. 64” — ― Albert Einstein
Aging Capriciously 