Maybe it’s because I’m a naturally more argumentative person, or because I’m highly opinionated, or divisive, or whatever it is you’d want to call me when I’m being contrary, but I have, on average, at least a dozen arguments a day.
About 50% of those are even out loud.
The rest, I’m sad to say, are all internal repeats of arguments I’ve had in the past. Arguments that are years, or even over a decade old. Not even good arguments, really, just points that were made that I didn’t have a rebuttal for THEN but I definitely do NOW.
I can’t seem to kick this internal compulsion to correct them, or to correct old, wrong ideas when I come across them again. I have to fight the urge to go up to them even though we haven’t spoken in five years or, 15 years, and say, “you were wrong about ____________. I now have the dream response that I’ve spent at least twelve showers finessing until I’m confident every single angle and point of attack has been countered. Ha-HAH!”
If only others could remember their wrongness with the brilliant clarity that I remember their wrongness. SIGH.
Of the qualities we inevitably all tolerate in each other, constant correcting has to be among the most abrasive. (Probably don’t correct me on this, it’ll just validate it)
Trouble is, correctors have this fundamental idea that being right is of extreme importance. And how could anyone possibly go about their day being wrong about something when it’s very easy to set them on the right path? It’s like discovering at 10pm that you’ve got breakfast from 8am stuck in your teeth still. What? No one thought to mention it??
But there is this idea in each one of us I think that the opinions we hold are the right ones. And they continue to be the right beliefs until someone comes along and convinces us otherwise, and now suddenly we yet again have the right beliefs.
You see, the truth is that we all only ever feel that we are wrong briefly, that wrongness is a passing situation, easily corrected by converting your mind again to something that is right, or by ignoring any information that is contrary to your previously held rightness.
You will never encounter someone in this life who says, “Well that’s just my opinion on politics. It’s wrong. But I’ve decided to keep using it as a basis for all my decisions anyway.”
Someone might be glib enough to say, “I might be wrong”, but speaking to you confidentially as someone who’s said this before, it’s usually sarcastic.
So I’ll still go on arguing in my head with all those phantoms of friends gone by, but perhaps, maybe just perhaps, it’s because I’m still not convinced I’m right, I’m just not ready to admit it yet.
Notes from the Sea 