Here is a far simpler explanation:
People change when they are wrong about something.In many ways, this explains my running outfit better than anything I posted last week. I used to think that the point of the running outfit was to optimize my running performance. I've learned that I was wrong. Now, I understand that the point is to be able to make it home in case something goes awry. The best lessons are often learned the hard way.
I used to think too much about the front end – the running – and didn’t give much thought at all to the back end – the trip home. Now, I know to think through these decisions a little more, I know it without thinking it, I know to be just a little more careful.
I was wrong and I changed. I express this causal relationship so easily because it has been on my mind a lot of late, almost all the time, and like any idea at the top of the mind, I notice it whenever it pops up elsewhere. When I can relate something to the idea, I do so immediately. The post from a week ago is one example. I was wrong and I changed.
Another example comes from my recent reading. In November, I was working my way through Albert Camus’s Lyrical and Critical Essays when this similar concept came up:
Most of the time, experience means defeat. Knowledge gained comes only from having lost so much in the process.Camus spoke to my thought – change grows out of being wrong. I suppose for most people, it takes a loss to recognize error. It's possible to change and it's possible to help other people change. But for the most part, someone yet to realize the error, yet to experience the loss, isn't ready for a change.
I'm starting to see that the problem with change isn't a lack of knowledge or education. Almost anytime I suspect someone else is wrong, I'm dealing with a person who is perfectly informed. The problem isn't a lack of facts, the problem isn't a blind eye to the truth. The problem is with the contradiction of multiple truths clashing with one another.
The outfit that makes it comfortable to walk makes it too hot to run, the outfit that makes it comfortable to run makes it too cold to walk. There is nothing I can add to these truths. There is no missing fact to resolve the contradiction these truths create. The facts I present in any argument will only be parried by better-entrenched facts supporting better-crafted arguments.
Those caught in the contradiction of truths have one way out – by being wrong. When a truth is lost, the contradiction goes with it. The loss is experience and it's the essence of what’s been on my mind. All I seem to do these days is think to myself – you are going to be different when you realize you are wrong – and hope the hard way doesn't happen as I wait for this lesson to be learned.
The thought always makes me a little older. Is this kind of thinking healthy? As the public service announcement implores, when we see something, we should say something, right? By not speaking up, by not stepping in, I know I risk allowing something irreparable to happen.
But I can't meet the challenge of sharing that I think of turning back only because I once arrived at the wrong destination. I don’t have the conviction to explain why I worry more about getting home than going out, don't have the words to read Albert Camus aloud, don't know which card I need to turn over so someone can see the other side of oh, it’ll be fine.
I was reflecting recently on why I don't speak up as much today, why I’ve changed the way I express myself, why I’m more careful. The obvious explanation was that I was becoming more experienced and, in the process, gaining more knowledge. This is the traditional model of education: learn something new, apply the new thing, and repeat. I've done it for thirty years and I'm looking forward to doing it for thirty years more.
But even as I accepted the explanation, I noticed exceptions. These exceptions were not in outright conflict with the explanation. It wasn’t like I learned something new and did the exact opposite. Maybe exception isn’t the best word here. What I’m describing is more like a time lag between understanding and implementation, maybe, or an incubation period where I sit on an idea before getting around to carrying it out.
One example came to mind on an early morning walk. Why do I always stop at red lights? It wasn’t like I learned about these last week, you know? At some point, I learned how the lights worked and, these days, I stop. I became a little more careful. And in-between?
Well, reader, it was a period of jaywalking and rights on red and, hey, even the occasional straight on red if I saw all the angles. I now see these acts as the bridge of sorts spanning the distant shores of learning and application. I don’t recall building this bridge and I have no clever name for the river running below. All I know is that I spent quite a bit of time on it as I made my way, with increasing caution, from one bank to the next. Whatever I lost on the journey was swept downstream.
As Camus noted decades ago, there is a certain knowledge gained only through loss. I guess once people lose their conviction about being right, they become wrong, and change. Maybe watching my neighbors turn a routine street-crossing into a death-defying adventure made an impact on me. Maybe I saw how we were all headed somewhere, somewhere we didn't understand, somewhere downstream where all the losses accumulate. We were all headed somewhere, for sure, despite not knowing exactly where. Maybe on such trips the question of how to get there deserves an outsize importance.
Or maybe, as I’m so often being reminded, I’m just turning thirty. Young reader, we old folks are naturally more careful. I’m just getting older, really, and in the process applying the lessons of being wrong. It must be true since the experience of being wrong takes time and, the longer I’m around, the more time I use. It’s simple math, I suppose, because it takes almost no time to lose something. After thirty years, I surely must have lost something.
I don’t know for sure exactly what I’ve lost. I’m not sure it even matters. What’s lost is gone and never comes back. Thankfully, it isn’t confidence – though I did suspect it for a while. But I’m more confident today than ever. I write here and express my thoughts or feelings in ways I could not just a couple of years ago. I change my mind. I don’t worry about having nothing in common with other people. I sing and dance, sometimes. I walk into the full force of all my uncertainties and expect to emerge as a better person on the other side. No, reader, it isn’t confidence I’ve lost. Or at least, it doesn’t feel that way. I’m more full of it than ever.
And yet, it must be related, surely, because I’m more careful now than ever before. As I heard Dani Shapiro read aloud from Hourglass, her memoir on aging – be careful. It’s a refrain of sorts in the book, one that becomes more frequent, one that comes through louder each time, as she cautiously guides us through her life – be careful. It was important to hear it, not just read it, because from her voice I understood another layer of its meaning – be careful. I hear it all the time now – be careful. I hear it as I take a day off to rest a sore foot – be careful – or pull the brakes at a yellow light – be careful – or try to decipher the nutrition facts – be careful.
I used to look forward to turning thirty. I talked this over months ago with a friend, a friend yet to turn thirty himself. He pointed out that the thirties would be easier than the twenties. I agreed, almost entirely. But I was wrong about this, too, because I wasn’t looking carefully at the thirties, I was only looking at the front end. I was thinking about my twenties and how its specific difficulties, the setbacks of youth and inexperience, would go away as a matter of definition. My confidence, one that grew by the day, would help me meet the new challenges. And time, the most reliable companion of all, would heal the wounds I carried into the new decade.
But I was wrong, I think. The errors of youth, the convictions of confidence, and the repairs made by time; they all share the common thread of resolving the clash of truths. I'm sure the thirties will see my continued emergence from the uncertain space between competing realities. It might even be a clarifying experience, it might even be fun, but it certainly won't be any easier. The process of being wrong won't get any easier as I get older.
All those people I’ve met over the years, those I never thought would go, now gone. All those hobbies and activities and commitments, the very things I poured myself into, now gone. All those places I called home, all those people I called friends, all those things I called mine, now gone. But to where have these gone?
I don’t know where they’ve gone. I have not even a single clue. I don't need to know because I don't need another thing to be wrong about. But this not knowing will only get harder in my thirties, it will only get harder as I go, because I’m well aware where they've gone. They’ve gone to where I’m going. Eventually, I’ll learn.
And until then, I’ll wait, right here, in the space between those two truths, in the world held in place by all the pairs, above the river defined by its banks. I’ll look back at what I've lost, look forward to what I'll learn, and hope that not every coming lesson will be learned the hard way.
