It doesn’t have to be right
When someone writes a book, they are thought of as an authority on that subject. It is not a coincidence that writers of books are called authors! For many of my clients the thought of being dubbed an expert is terrifying, even if they do have a ton of knowledge and years of experience. What if they are wrong? The thing is that is okay and here is why.
The entrance stone to Newgrange in the Boyne Valley, Ireland. Newgrange is a 5200 year old Passage Tomb famous for the Winter Solstice illumination which lights up the passage and chamber at exactly 9:00 for 17 minutes.
Imagine building a tower amidst the ruins of a war torn city. Everything is flattened for miles around and you want to lift above it and gain a bigger perspective. There are piles of rubble where buildings once stood. Many of the crumpled walls have collapsed along the line of the mortar; the hard bricks are still intact. You decide to use the bricks available to make a tower.
Carefully you chip off the old mortar and start to build. The tower grows taller and taller and gives a fine view of the devastation and the hope beyond. But then you run out of the bricks and to push on higher you have to make new ones. After a complicated process the new bricks are made and you finish your tower.
A few years later, other buildings have grown up and it's decided the tower could be higher, more bricks are added and it becomes taller still. In a parallel universe there are some flawed bricks used near the bottom, which crumble and the tower comes tumbling down. The old bricks are scrupulously examined and tested and only perfect bricks are used to construct a new tower.
In a similar way this is how human advances are made. We learn, we gather all the knowledge, ideas, observations that other people have brought to the World and then sometimes we wonder why. We are curious about the next step, what is around the next corner. We want to unravel the mysteries further. We produce an idea, an explanation, a hypothesis. We seek evidence and make observations that support our theories to be sure as we can be that they are right, but there will always be people who advance our ideas further and there is always a chance that we are wrong and we have to rebuild again.
The truth is no one can be absolutely sure that an idea or an explanation they are giving is 100% right. When they are trying to push the frontier of knowledge, they are moving into the unknown. In order to offer up ideas, knowing they might not be right, we have to be prepared to be wrong. It’s an act of courage, deep vulnerability and a generous gift to humankind to do this. Ideas are precious and tender and when they are revealed they have to be treated as such, carefully, respectfully, examined, nurtured and grown. What happens if they are smashed to bits, trampled underfoot, destroyed, dismissed? Any rays of genius are gone forever and there will be no further green shoots. There will never be any progress, we become too scared to share our ideas.
Our ideas are a way in which we show our genius. Who has decided that they are never going to do something again because someone else (often an adult) has made them feel stupid and bad? How many geniuses and brilliant ideas have been lost to our World?
Our education system is geared towards getting as much right as possible. From the cradle children are taught tangible facts. This is how it is; this is the right way; this is correct; this is wrong. Our World is polarised into opposing views of what is right and what is wrong. We are stuck! We have trained ourselves to stay safe, fearful of being seen as too wacky or weird, to hide our genius and scatter our ideas like tiny diamonds amongst the dust. Lost forever.
Real progress comes from sharing our ideas, building on what is brilliant from each idea.
Let’s be brave and offer up our ideas humbly and let’s receive the ideas of others respectfully and tenderly like the precious treasures they are. Let’s make progress and make the world a better place.