The Stronger Your Certainty Is The Lesser Mine Is

The purpose of serving any greater good is generally lost on those who are not simply content to believe they are right but also feel the need to ensure that everyone else knows they're right as well.

This is to their shame, although they will rarely recognize it as so, as the loss suffered by the narrator does not exceed the damage inflicted to their audience.

Everyone believes to some degree they are right, this should be expected. The true nature of their need to loudly declare their certainty really only serves to reveal the lesser degree of certainty in actually being so. For them this rarely comes to light as they fail to see the greater value to be found by leading people to answers rather than dragging them.

It is okay to think you might be right, it is not okay to believe that only you are right, or worse, in thinking you cannot be wrong.

Such are the blinders of inexperience as the measure for espousing absolutes.

The key is to listen as though listening were your only and best option. Listening to learn and understand the perspective you would otherwise never have considered, listening as though it will never be your turn to speak, and that is fair enough.

Doing otherwise is adversarial.

While our inherent limitation of listening through our own lens of understanding and experience may, to some lesser or greater measure, be unavoidable, we must make certain that it does not confuse us into hearing those things which have not been said.

That you may not have experienced the same does not at all suffice as an argument against the truthfulness and honesty to be found in the experiences of others.

We may learn much from this one single life we have lead, but we would be all the more wise for taking the time to learn from the lives of others too.

Many would tell you otherwise, but the truth stands alone and is not subject to our desires for it to be otherwise. Regardless of our inherent need to blur it with feelings and perspectives, there is not your truth or my truth, there simply truth and it waits to be found.

It is our choice, each day, if we will make the effort to seek it.

Let the security of knowing you are right, allow you to remain silent about it long enough for others to be intrigued and ask.

Then consider that your cue to speak, and until then just listen.

You may learn a thing or two, and spare yourself some shame in the process.