February 15 | being wrong on purpose

When you first joined the world of adults, there were probably some painfully obvious facts that most adults just didn’t get.

Maybe it was the pending importance of the internet, or the normalcy of working from home, or the importance of building credit at an early age. Maybe it was something far more trite, like Uggs and Southpole jeans really being here to stay.

There’s much written about the foolishness of youth—and rightfully so. But little is written about the foolishness of the old, probably because it’s those once-foolish young people getting older before they sit down and do any writing. 

In fact, it seems like the most trivial and least useful observation to say that people with more information make, on average, better decisions than people with less information. 

In fact, when we look internally, we often tend to more vividly remember the mistakes of our pasts than the things we were right about—more inclined to dwell on our own foolishness than on all the change we brought from our pasts to our maturity. 

Silly things, sure. Like snapchat filters and hashtags.

But entirely not-silly and very consequential things, too. Compassion for addicts. Care for the environment. An understanding the world of sexuality is not nearly as simple as some made it out to be. 

So here’s the question: what thing do you view today as foolish or odd that will, in ten years, be considered a normal part of wisdom?

Or, said otherwise, are you ready to be fundamentally wrong about something? 

Because that’s the only way we all get better. 

(also, might be time to ditch the Uggs)… Read the rest