Embracing the Uncertainty: Your Right to be Wrong

Hello and welcome to another episode of Words With Myself.

Most people are certain about a lot of things. They are certain that they know who they are. They are certain that their opinions and ideas are correct. They are certain that they are right and that other people are wrong.

We can see this everywhere you look. If you look in the news or in the media or on social media, you will see that people are almost absolute in their beliefs in politics we see that the left are absolutely convinced that they are right and the right is wrong and the right are absolutely convinced that the right is right and that the left is wrong and neither will concede or give any ground to the other they won't even

say i understand your argument or i understand your point of view because they believe that they are battling against two points and to concede any ground would be taken advantage of.

If one person is saying I can see your perspective and the other person is saying no you're absolutely wrong and everything that you believe is wrong and everything that I believe is right then conceding that little bit of ground can feel like you're giving up your position that you're not as certain as they are and everyone is making this effort to be sure to be certain.

It's like that famous quote that was attributed to Socrates in his death where his dying words were, all I know is that I know nothing.

And there's a reason why that has stuck around for so long and been so prevalent as a phrase. Because even though it may have been misquoted or whatever.

The important part is that idea that somebody who is well respected for what they knew would say in their final words that all they knew was that they knew nothing is because anyone who has done any depth of research into the universe or into the life or spirituality or anything, sooner or later, you go so far down the rabbit hole, you realize that you just popped out on the other side.

And that everything that is true is also untrue everything that is right is also wrong everything that is left is also right everything that is up is also down it is a paradox and it is almost virtually impossible to conceive or at least to have that be your foundation of thought you almost need to be rooted even if you're wrong in some idea because you have to believe that in order to have an ego, in order to exist in this world, you have to believe that you're doing the right thing.

Even if you doing everything that you believe is right and your intention being as pure and as true as possible could result in everything bad happening around you, causing suffering to lots of people around you, robbing people of the opportunity to do it for themselves and gain in confidence, who knows. But they say that the road to hell is paved in good intentions. And this alludes to the same thing, that doing good, even if your intention is to do good, can lead you down a dark path.

Because any time you venture too far to one side, you will almost loop back around. There will be this point where doing your good will be bad, or doing bad will actually be good. And it seems almost impossible to accept. And everyone will want to refute this and say, no, there is truth. And truth is the truth. You know, one plus one is two. That's truth. And to some degree, yes, that is correct. There is some truth in those ideas that one plus one is two.

But then if you start to unpick this a little bit and take it away from this kind of reductionist.

Rudimentary core science, and you say, well, OK, if you have one and you have one, but this one is a much bigger one and this one is a small one but I still have one and one and then I put them together and it's two but really that one is twice the size of that one so it should really be three anything like that it may be a bad example but the idea is that we begin to see that truth is quite elusive that as soon as you begin to apply something things are rarely forever true or true in

every instance you know something that is right we normally say in general terms that as long as it's a high enough percentage we will count that as true and everything outside of it as an anomaly so we have this statement is true and ignore those instances where it's not true because that's just a mistake or that's just a freak occurrence and I'm sure if I was to have this conversation with someone and they were to be arguing against my point they would likely

be able to say something that I personally couldn't refute that I would say yes I would say that that's true and probably consistently true most of the time I don't know whether it's true 100% of the time but I give it to you that is right and that is almost always going to be right I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but I'm sure it happens, I'm sure someone could find something. However...

It's enough to get the idea that even if there are some things that are always true, a majority of what we think, feel, and experience as truth is wrong. Or at least not wrong, but inaccurate. It's not always true. We believe it to be always true because that's a pattern that we've adopted. It might be doing the right thing. And we say doing the right thing is the right thing to do. It's always the right thing to do to help people.

It's always the right thing to do to put yourself out there and lend a hand or be nice to people or give compliments it's always true and that can't possibly always be true I'm sure there's loads of instances every day where people try to help people as well-intentioned or whatever as possible but it causes more harm than it saves and that does happen I remember I was once on the tube and I offered to help somebody carry their pram up onto the platform he did look like he could

manage himself but I just thought I would help him out but by helping him out he then got a bit flustered and then as he was going to do it his hand slipped and he dropped the pram and the baby almost fell right onto the track and, I was being nice I thought I was trying to help him out it was well-intentioned. And you know maybe he would have dropped it if I didn't help him or not but we don't know The point is, I didn't know. I just thought.

And a lot of what we think we are certain about is just thought. We are just 80% convinced. And people that say they are 100% convinced, or this is absolute, or they are certain, I'm always thinking, as soon as I hear this, I think, well, you probably haven't thought about it enough. And not in a rude way, but just in an honest way. Like, if you are certain about something, really think about it. Really, like, it takes a lot to be certain about one thing.

And most people are certain about everything that they believe. They are certain that they are right about everything. They're certain that they're doing the right thing in life. They're certain that who they are is who they're meant to be or who they should be.

They are certain in who they are. they say well no because that's just me that's who I am but that's not just you there's so much more to you than you think there is that you can't possibly say that this is you because there's also all of this stuff that you don't accept as you but it's still you so by saying that this is true and this is me and this is who I am you're only admitting to a small percentage of truth which doesn't make it truth at all it's

half truth at best but when you accept this when you accept that you could be wrong about everything you could be completely wrong about all of it what do you really know all you know to be true is contaminated through your lens of perception which is contaminated by things like what you've been told what you learned what society tells you All of this kind of stuff So your perception isn't truth You can look at something and see it wrong Even if you're

dead certain that that's what you saw You can still be wrong So you are not certain Of anything You don't know anything. And neither do I. None of us do. We all just have our own ideas. And this is what Socrates meant. When you get into the deep truths. When you explore far enough or long enough or deep enough, you will find that everything is a mystery that you cannot possibly say.

You can't say for certain that anything is true because the universe is too complex there is too much there are too many variables we cannot possibly attain a level of information that allows us to believe that we're well informed like even if we know a lot about earth stuff what about the entire universe that we know nothing about so really we don't know a lot about things we don't even know about our own oceans all we know is a small percentage of what is to be known so if

we had all of the information the whole universal collective level of information I'm sure we would all go oh yeah we were all really wrong about a lot of things I actually thought that I was this serious being and that my life mattered and that I had to do huge things and I had this huge responsibility and I had to live my life in this way and oh my god I was so wrong like I could have done anything I could have not made all of these decisions I felt like I was forced to do all these

things that I thought I had to do and I thought I had to be this person and that was all I could do and that was who I had to be but it wasn't. And when you free yourself from this expectation of knowing things or that you do know anything, you can relax and experience, go through the day and see what new information arises. To be less certain is to be at peace, to be at ease, to say it's okay, I don't know what's going on, I'm just here trying to figure it out, going through the days.

Eat what I want to eat and I do what I want to do but I don't claim to know anything as soon as you dip your toe into the ego games of certainty of saying I know this to be true I am right and you are wrong you will fall into the trap of taking life seriously of taking the game seriously and believing that this whole world this system that we have built is the whole extent of life and that that is all that matters you end up losing your true self to your ego and all there is is ego all you

are is the repeated beliefs that you've learned through other people that have told you stuff or you know through history or the information that's been collected over time that has also been widely doctored and manipulated to say certain things most people are certain about things that they've never proven they take science and say well i'm a scientist this is true and you know i know this because i've read it in this book about science and okay well did you do the experiment did you go and

do the thing that you know you say well no someone else did and they wrote about it and then how do you know it's true then you didn't do it you're not doing the experiments you're just taking someone else's words or what they have said as truth and i get that it's impractical you can't say well i'm going to do all of the experiments in the world and i'm.

Going to reinvent everything all it is is to. Just accept that you are not certain you don't know for sure as soon as i can feel.

It like even now just speaking about i can feel the level of resistance that people will have to this i can feel it in my bones like people want to be sure they want to be certain so bad they want to be right they and all of that like you can't say this stuff to people because that is like being right and being true about their opinions and who they are their ideas of life is so strong that to say we don't really know anything for certain

is to attack at that ego that they've built up over a long period of time. And we all get like this. We are all certain of our own things and we all have our own ideas. But when you let yourself off the hook, when you decide to say, this is what I think, this is what I believe, and you are entitled to what you believe and think, I don't know. I'm not certain. You can have your opinion and I shall have mine. That means you don't have to prove anything to anybody.

You don't have to convince anyone. You don't have to make up anyone's mind. All you have to do is believe what you want to believe and think what you want to think. It doesn't matter whether people agree. It doesn't matter whether everyone agrees or no one agrees. It doesn't matter whether a majority agrees or a minority. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that you live this experience and do what you want to do.

Think what you want to think. Believe what you want to believe. If you believe in numerology and that 1111 is some significant number then it's it it will be that's important to you and if you believe in science and that you think that that is the only source of truth and that anything mystical or spiritual is a load of hippie rubbish you believe that and that will be true for you i don't need people to believe what i believe i don't need people to think

what i think if somebody agrees with me that's great cool and if somebody disagrees with me that's great cool i don't mind either way i think what I think based on what I have learned and my experience and I'm aware that anything that comes through perception or belief or experience could possibly be wrong. You know if I was born in a different place or if I had a different set of experiences maybe I would be completely convinced of something entirely different.

So how can I say that I'm not certain if just being born in a different place would have completely changed my worldview and everything that I believe? That's not very certain That is just being certain That what you were told Or what you went through was true And that is That doesn't make the overarching truth true That just means that your Experiences were true to you. So let go. Honestly, let go.

Let go of the need to be right. Let go of the need to convince others. Let go of the need for other people to think that you're doing the right thing or that you're smart or that you know what you're doing. It doesn't matter. None of us know what we're doing. None of us have a clue about what's going on.

We are all just trying to do our best. And the sooner we relinquish this control of other people of needing to agree with us or needing to see us as right or needing to see us in a certain way you are free you are free to do and believe what you want and other people are free to do the same stop trying to convince people stop trying to get people to see your point of view people either agree or they don't and if you want to convince someone then that's

fine have that conversation with them allow them to see your perspective but don't lecture them don't try to convince them because you think you're right just share what you believe and why you believe it if that resonates with them then fine and if it doesn't fine you are free to live completely separate lives you are free to interact with who you want to interact with. But you can only be free if you stop trying to control it.

If you stop trying to control yourself, control being right, control being perfect, control being seen as good, and let go of it all. Let go of this certainty that you have, that you know what is right or wrong, that you know what is good and bad. Because you don't. Nobody does. None of us do. We can't see that level of information or all those variables we can't so you don't know so stop trying to convince yourself that you are right thank you for listening.