Being Wrong

Just watched a couple of TED talks about creativity and being wrong.

We often punish/discourage ourselves and others for making mistakes and being wrong. We have invested time and energy to develop our view of the world. Often to admit an error in even part of our view is to invalidate everything. This discourages us from looking at things from another angle and trying new things.

When in school I sometimes butted heads over the interpretation of a story. What I got out of the story was not in agreement with the teachers fixed interpretation. One teacher would always read two very different interpretations from test, never calling right or wrong. The grades were based on the quality of the argument. I once heard an interview with the author of a best seller here the host presented an interpretation that the author responded to by saying "I never thought of that. It is a valid interpretation. Thanks."

Recently while rereading Exodus I got a very different lesson than what I had received before (Exodus can be seen as the process of recovering from a dependency.) My previous interpretations were not wrong, just different. As intended, our view of the world is meant to evolve with may nuances, tunes, and colors.

Sometimes I deliberately am wrong. If I tell that the sound from a thunder bolt arrived before the light you will know it was very close. Better than if I say it was 20 feet away. I have told multiple people that their legs are just long enough to reach the ground. If they were longer than you would always have bent legs and if they were shorter you would appear to be floating. Yup, both ideas are wrong. They do give us different way of looking at things. By the way a lot of dance teaches talk about being suspended by a string when they are working on posture and/or lightness of steps.

Don't be afraid to make mistakes or be wrong. If neither occurs then you are stalled in a rut.

Mistakes are seeds of Creation. Creation is Art.