It’s easy to see things as they aren’t. The older I get, the more I find value in being wrong. Of course, in most situations it’s important and urgent to be correct, or to withhold opinion. Every year, though, these situations seem fewer and fewer.
It’s important to know when to brake while driving and to be right about which end of the knife has a point on it and what to say when you’ve upset someone. On and on. But so much of life isn’t that important at all. My brain makes a gazillion little judgements a day that don’t matter to me or anyone else. That over there is a bottle cap. The lyric of that song is “you’ve been tussled”. My foot itches.
When I walk, I see cars and people and streets and sidewalks. Those are important. Nearly all the rest can be wrongly perceived. I was certain that included photo was a worn decal of a dog running. The idea of a dog running so enthusiastically, the idea of a worn decal, the idea of a decal no longer attached to what it was; all of that was a perfect reply to the what my mind was working on when I saw it. I snapped a picture.
Only then did I realize that it wasn’t a decal. And it still doesn’t matter that I was wrong.
