(October 12)

Wrong!

"You're wrong!"

How scared are we to hear those words? May I offer a story that may help the way you think about being wrong.

Earlier this semester I sat in the basement of the JFSB when a student voluntarily offered an interpretation to a classical Chinese text that we were reading. As a class, we always take a couple weeks to pour over a certain text and then slowly decipher the hidden meaning behind it. At this particularly time, we were still in the process of translating what this classical writing might be. The overly confident student raised his hand to offer a possible translation. He started safe (as most of us do) by qualifying his comment before he said what he thought. He hesitantly and confidently said,"Alright! I might be wrong but I think it's...." And then he went on to offer his translation. The teacher got a big smile on his face and said, "By golly! You're right... it WAS wrong!"

We knew the professor cared about us and this little joke was delivered in humor and in a very non-condescending way. After a second or two of pregnant, confused silence all of us laughed as we understood his joke that his translation was, indeed, wrong, but the qualifying statement he made of "this might be wrong" was, in fact, right.

It was a simple, witty comment, but it left an impression on me. Ya' know, I bet all of us right before coming to earth said, "I might be wrong, but here goes!" Our decision to be wrong is the most right choice we've ever made.

Embrace mistakes! Be wrong! And SMILE!