Sure enough to say it

Anyone who puts something into the world has to believe, at least a little, that they are right.

The person who writes, teaches, makes a product, or speaks up in a family argument about where the children should study needs enough conviction to say it out loud. Without that there is only hedging, and hedging helps nobody. A view that will not commit cannot be tested, used or even properly disagreed with.

And yet nobody who thinks carefully can be sure. Everything we believe is the best explanation we have found so far. Tomorrow someone brings a figure, a story, an exception, and the explanation has to move.

These two seem to pull against each other. Confidence says hold the line. Doubt says loosen the grip. Most of us settle the tension by choosing one. Some become the person who is always certain and never moves, which is exhausting to be around and usually wrong in the end. Others become the person who never quite says anything, which is safe and of no use to anyone.

The harder path is to do both at once. To say clearly what I think, in a form that could be shown to be wrong, and then to actually want to hear it when it is. Not merely to put up with being corrected, but to go looking for it, because that is how the view improves.

It is uncomfortable. It means speaking without the shelter of certainty and listening without the shelter of pride.

Conviction without openness is only stubbornness. Openness without conviction is only silence. Neither, on its own, leaves anything worth keeping.