Wrong

“Being very right isn’t permission to go about it in an incorrect way.”
~ Matt Donnelly, co-host of Penn’s Sunday School

I was born defiant. I can also highlight moments that entrenched my general lack of trust in authority. One such moment was in middle school involving a teacher I wouldn’t name if I could remember it.

She lectured the class about language and how it breaks down over time. She said, “For example, many people think the phrase is ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it, too,’ but the proper phrasing is, ‘you can’t have your Kate and Edith, too.’”

I pumped the brakes so hard the class heard my tires screech. “What’s that?!?” She repeated it. I was obnoxious about ensuring she knew the ‘cake’ version must far outdate whatever nonsense she was talking about Kates and Ediths. She ended the discussion quickly when she pulled out her “I’m a teacher” card.

I went home and researched the topic. I worked harder on this than any actual assignment I was ever given. Sure enough, the cake version dates back to the 1500s. Her incorrect version was from a Statler Brothers song from 1967. I brought in my well-documented position that proclaimed, “the proper phrase is, ‘You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.’” I expected, demanded, an apology to me and my classmates. I expected an apology for all of civilization, given the level of wrong she was. Instead, I spent the rest of the class in the office for something called insubordination.

I never admitted that I, too, was wrong. The expression seems stupid. Who wants cake they can’t eat, too? There are very few uses of cakes outside of the eating. The original saying is, “A man can not have his cake and eat his cake.”

I went into the exchange knowing I was right and she was wrong. I certainly wasn’t having a conversation to understand both points of view. There were only two options. One was right. The other? Wrong. I never considered the third option—both were wrong. A big problem with being wrong is it feels exactly like being right. Even if I was right, it was not permission to go about it the way I did. I have never convinced someone to change their thinking through an attack. A celebratory parade of their wrongness never won support for my stance.

Can I accept that my feeling of right exists even when I’m wrong? Will I have a conversation to find the nuance between our views? Do I appreciate there is more than just right or wrong?

Be curious, be kind, be whole, do good things.