There I was seated on my table in the lab feeling frantic and frustrated as I was processing the data again and again. It didn’t make sense. Why was I not getting the results I was supposed to. It was a simple enough trial. How could I get even that wrong? As i sat there half in thought of why i wasn’t getting the results I was supposed to and half contemplating how pathetic an engineer I am going to be, my professor (considered a rockstar in his field) walks up to me and tells me “its okay to be wrong. there is much one can learn from being wrong. whats important is that you try to not repeat the same mistake again”. Its a simple logic. But more importantly coming from a man with abundant experience in life and considered one of the authorities in his field world over, one cannot but help feel that if he says so then probably its impossible to never ever make a mistake in your life.
One goes to school, and is considered as wrong if they can’t be right on the exam sheets. One goes to work and its just essential to be right all the time as your job and reputation is on the line. You look into the morning paper and you see articles dissecting the actions of every other somebody and nobody and trying to tell you why one is right and the other is not. The political parties are always trying to tell you why they are right or rather why the other party is wrong. There is always one person in every family who feels it necessary to let you know why their generation was correct and your generation is doing all the wrong things or how his/her opinion is the only flawlessly correct opinion.
As kids when you start giving exams, you are inexplicably started off on this journey which tries to imbibe in you the ‘quality’ of being right all the time. It starts with a quest for the right answers for countless examinations and soon translates into a brainwashed state where being a successful adult means being right. You might not recognize this quality in you, but the next time listen to yourself and if you find yourself giving an opinion, criticizing or advicing people when not asked and you might see this quality in you. But having an opinion on everything is not really an issue. Its more like a fundamental right. The issue would be the blurring of lines of right and wrong. When people become so obsessed with proving themselves right that they forget that proving the other wrong is not the same as proving oneself to be right.
Let me explain. The pious ardent religious follower who attributes everything that goes wrong in the life of the atheist or agnost to his lack of belief or indifference to religious belief. The political opposition that assumes its duty is to literally oppose everything the ruling party does by pointing out only the schemes that didn’t quite work out (The guy who decided to coin the term the opposition party was either very aware of the human tendencies of a politician and having a good laugh or just not aware of how badly it was going to misfire). Everyone who appears on print or visual media claiming how their views are right because the other person with a different vision got it wrong. The teacher who decides to show the student how wrong he was for not listening in the math class, preferring instead to scribble some caricatures, by going extra tough on grading his/her answer sheet. The superior in office who decides to prove the junior how wrong he is by ridiculing his wishful ideas. The random religious leader or the more random religious believers who like to keep pointing out how all the misery of the others is because of how their beliefs are wrong and as opposed to theirs. The pro-patriarchal society figures of the world who jump at the chance to make the life of independent woman as difficult as possible and then blame the obstacles that an independent woman would face on her lifestyle choices.
Everyone wants to be right and thats okay. But where is the logic in saying that one is right because the other is wrong. So might be its time to revisit the basic idea of right is good and wrong is bad. Its not necessary to right always. In fact, if you listen to my experienced and highly reputed professor, its probably impossible to be right always. So its okay to be wrong. As long as you learn from your wrong’s, being wrong is probably not so bad. So, to all who try to tell others how they are right because the other person was wrong. I am sorry, but thats not how logical deduction works.
