Most of What I Say is Wrong
Most of what I say is wrong, and that is just fine! Being vulnerable and open to correction is part of bettering myself.
Being consistently correct is a difficult trick that only comes with experience and effort. There's also varying degrees of correctness and wrongness.
Which is why I can confidently assert that most of what I say is wrong to some degree.
It takes vulnerability to embrace the incorrectness. I could never write, and never reveal myself to be ignorant – or I could accept that I will be wrong and publish anyway.
That I'm writing this article should make it clear which I have chosen: publish and be done with it.
The Crooked Path to Cultivating Correctness
Correctness is the result of experience, iteration, and refinement. It doesn't just "happen" as if by accident or innate ability.
I haven't had time enough in my life to learn everything. Outside my narrow bands of expertise, I'm just another weirdo deviant struggling to cope with life.
To begin with, there are varying shades of correctness: one can be a little wrong, in the details and minutiae. Or one can be way off the mark, nearly incomprehensibly so.
If you're only a little wrong, then pedants are your main concern. If you are way off mark, then you are your main concern and everyone around you should be encouraging you to correct that.
The process of course-correcting that wrongness is what eventually leads to correctness. You may take a long, winding, crooked path to get there... but correctness is attainable. For the most part.
It's not an exact process, but if you keep working at it you will become less and less wrong with time and careful consideration.
Showing the Vulnerable Side
We are all born ignorant, and our youth is spent learning to be more correct about a wide array of topics.
Being young, growing, and learning can all incorporate vulnerability in them. All three are based around making mistakes, accepting them, and then improving.
Vulnerability is about placing your authentic self before others for examination. It's risky, but comes with the reward of bringing you closer to correctness.
Don't mistake vulnerability for weakness; it takes a strength of will to be openly vulnerable. Like saying "I don't care what others think, so long as I know that I'm doing the best I can."
I wrote an article that I shall call to your attention, featuring the intersection of my dearheart's submission and vulnerability:
Mistress
"Love Notes to My Future Self"
I often describe this blog as being "love notes to my future self."
By that I mean many things, foremost of which is that I'm chronicling bits and pieces of my thoughts at various points in my life. I want my future self to look back upon my present self with fondness and compassion.
My future self will definitely not enjoy everything I write. Most of what I write is wrong, after all, and no doubt I will cringe to read it later when I have more knowledge.
That said, I'd rather be vulnerable and show the truest thoughts I have for my future self to remember.
I am inspired by – who else? – my mother.
My mother saved her teenage poetry in a binder, and one day she took me to her room and we laid in bed and read it.
Teenage poetry, if you're not familiar, is as awful as it comes. My mother was an exceptional person, but in this regard she was no exception. Especially not with the darkness of grief that her poetry displayed.
Yet she could look back in her middle-age and appreciate it. There were little details that would have been lost to time, if not for her writing jogging her memory.
Which is ultimately why I am willing to publish my mistakes. I'm not writing just for an audience, but for my future self.
