#2309: Thursday, July 25: Admitting I don't know

Post 2309

- 8 years and 206 days since I started this blog -

  

Daily Comment

I think there aren't that many visible signs of maturity on me.

While I may often be the oldest person in the room (really, really often the case), I rarely feel like I'm the most mature.

One of the most recent concessions to maturity has been embracing uncertainty. Understanding that everything I know isn't correct, that memory is rarely, if ever, 100% accurate, and that not only are there things I don't know, but there's a lot - a lot! - of things I won't ever know, either because of my limitations or their own ineffable qualities.

It wasn't always that way. I was the shitty know-it-all. More than that, I learned at a relatively early age that if you said things a certain way, it appeared you knew what you were talking about.

This led to some otherwise-friendly people thinking of me as arrogant. I am not prepared to say they were wrong.

I have no defense. That's what happens when you let a single trait define you at a young age (in my case, it was being smart). But being smart and insecure means you put a lot of social capital in appearing smart. Even when, as I've mentioned in another recent post, you're not really that smart, and you are really dumb in some ways.

I put a lot of emphasis on being right. That must have seemed pretty obnoxious to the people around me.

Now I don't. Now I'm smart enough to know the limitations of my intelligence. And I see this emphasis on being right as another symptom of those intellectual limitations.

I try not to be insistent on the correctness of my thoughts and ideas. After I've made my case, I back down. I admit quickly when I don't know something. I think when I presented my ideas forcefully, insisting on making my point, I was being oppressive.

I now lose arguments with a shrug. I qualify my ideas with the "I think" prefix. I make suggestions in the form of questions. I do not want to be forceful.

The idea of me being oppressive is the opposite of everything I believe in.

I'm grateful for the spiritual and intellectual growth that has fostered my happiness.

Food and Diet 

Today's Weight:                    199.9 lbs.

Previous Weight (7/24/19):         198.6 lbs.

Net Loss/Gain:                     + 1.3 lbs.

Diet Comment

A two-pound loss followed by a one-and-a-quarter-pound gain, and both days the eating was almost identical! Go figure. I'm used to it, the only thing unusual about this is that it follows eight days in a row of the having the same weight.

Food Log

Breakfast
6:00pm: 

Arugula, cabbage, chard, kale, spinach, roasted turkey breast, shaved parmesan cheese, walnuts, chia seeds, hemp seeds and balsamic vinaigrette.

Lunch
9:00pm: Manchego cheese and almonds, a Quest bar.

Dinner
12:15am: Vegetable curry (kale, spinach, lentils) on riced cauliflower, and a Quest bar.

Liquid Intake

   Espressos: 1;   Coffee: 00 oz.;  Water: 92+ oz.;

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