I Don’t Get It
In a recent Medium post, “Your Opinions Can Be ‘Wrong’” (Medium link), I wrote about how feelings (how we feel about people, issues, etc.) aren’t facts and adherence to feelings can hide “flaws” in our positions and beliefs from us. More importantly, these “flaws” don’t make us “bad” people, but point out opportunities to improve ourselves or our beliefs.
What We Don’t Know
It’s interesting how I relate a lot to conversations with my son. Maybe, it’s because kids have a simpler, more clear way of seeing the world than adults sometimes permit themselves. You can easily identify an unclear explanation because they need to ask “Why” until it does “make sense.”
My son is still young, so he has the occasional habit of not admitting when/what he doesn’t know. I’ll ask and confirm by his response that he doesn’t know. To guide him through his own problem-solving, I’ll ask, “Why don’t you admit that you didn’t know?”
Just the other day, I explained to him that, for various reasons, there are people that start answering or responding without entirely understanding and don’t/can’t admit anything. I told him,
“If you don’t understand something, don’t be afraid to ask questions. There are too many ‘grown-ups’ that start talking or ‘doing” without understanding. Don’t be like them. Ask questions.”
