Admitting When I’m Wrong

It’s been brought to my attention before that I have a hard time admitting when I am wrong, something that fortunately happens very infrequently. The reason isn’t because of pride or stubbornness, really it’s not, it’s because I prefer to acknowledge those changes of opinion as reassessments. Sometimes additional information becomes available that wasn’t previously. Charges of pride or stubbornness only gain merit if somebody refuses to consider anything they are presented with that contradicts what they previously believed to be true. All too often in today’s world, particularly when it comes to things of a political nature, people only want to hear that which reinforces their preconceived notions.

It’s also an annoying trait of politicians themselves. When is the last time that you heard one say “I used to hold this position, but having given it some more thought and actually talked to those that this policy might affect, have changed my mind”? The answer is probably never and if somebody actually had the courage to make this statement they would surely be immediately accused of flip-flopping or pandering to polls.

There is also the unfortunate truth that people change. Priorities, temperament, interests, all of these are perpetually evolving, our view of the world around us evolving and our experiences along the way playing their part in this process as well. My girls have certainly changed me but there is no doubt in my mind that even without them I would be a much different person than I was ten or even five years ago.

I was confronted with all of this recently, forced to admit that perhaps I had been too quick to judgement, that there was another side to a situation that I was not fully appreciative of.

I type these words tonight humbled, issuing a retraction to a previous blog post that I wrote about The Trouble With Legos.

The premise of that piece was thus: since an assembled lego creation is too fragile a construct to actually play with, the time and effort spent putting it together was wasted and it seemed more sensible to simply buy an actual toy. It was written almost two years ago from the perspective of somebody almost completely incapable of following the directions required to put together anything with more than a handful of pieces and also of somebody that just liked to play with toys.

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Since that time there have been two crucial pieces of information that have caused me to reconsider this position.

#1 : There is very little more satisfying than the pride shown by a child who has accomplished something that they were unsure of their prospects of completing at the beginning of the endeavor.

#2: One thing that is more satisfying is the peace and quiet that results from that aforementioned child spending several hours in deep concentration while they work diligently at achieving that goal.

I’m not suggesting that I was wrong about Legos, merely admitting that circumstances have changed in several ways that have since caused me to update my opinion. I’m not stubborn.

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This post was previously published on thirstydaddy.com and is republished on Medium.

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