The Value of Being Wrong
Ah “The Value of Being Wrong”!
We’re so conditioned to get it right the first time, we forget that no great accomplishment ever followed a straight path from the beginning.
Maria Popova, a favorite blogger/aesthete, reminds us “It is by erring again and again that we find the shape of the path, by tripping again and again that we learn to walk it. Along the way, the answers emerge not before us but in us.”
“Mistakes are at the very base of human thought, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack of being wrong, we could never get anything useful done. We think our way along by choosing between right and wrong alternatives, and the wrong choices have to be made as frequently as the right ones. We get along in life this way. We are built to make mistakes, coded for error.”
Lewis Thomas
“We learn, as we say, by ‘trial and error.’ Why do we always say that? Why not ‘trial and rightness’ or ‘trial and triumph’? The old phrase puts it that way because that is, in real life, the way it is done,”
Lewis Thomas
CLICK HERE to meet poetic scientist, Lewis Thomas, as part of Maria’s recent contribution to us mere mortals achieved by her digging into our human history for deeper insights.