In fallibility

I’ve found it most helpful to operate the assumption that any determination I make about the world is incorrect.

I don’t know if this very intellectual determination is the cause or result of the anxiety and indecisiveness that pervades my existence.

I’ve been right a lot: math problems, essays and other related academic bullshit. I’ve been wrong a lot and mostly about the important things: love, careers, food preferences.

I used to dislike peppers, so I never ate them. Actually, once, when I was quite young, I ate a green bell pepper and nearly spat it out. I (back when I believed in permanence of life, self and the world) stamped onto my wrist: “Don’t eat peppers: gross.”

Do you know how good peppers are? They’re healthy, they’re flavorful. In many dishes they are necessary to balance out bland, unexciting foods. And I went nearly 15 years without understanding that. Because I thought I knew something. Because I thought I was right.

Then I wrote this, a piece in which – as I wrote about how I had been wrong about my own tastes in music, about how I thought I wouldn’t like something and then I gave it an honest chance – I said I didn’t like something.

I wrote that I didn’t like rap, pop and country music.

I’d listened to some of it, mostly in the way that I had eaten peppers as a child. Nibble apprehensively around the edges, gag and then reject.

Then I recently started listening to some of the music that I thought I knew I didn’t like.

And I liked it.

If you're going to be an idiot, at least be aware of it...