The road through the wadi

After a storm in the mountains outside Sohar, two friends in a car disagree about the road ahead.

One says the water across the wadi is shallow and the crossing is fine. He has driven it a hundred times. The other says it looks faster than usual and they should wait an hour.

Both are certain. That is normal. Nobody argues for a view they think is wrong. And when two certain people disagree, or when anyone makes a call about what will happen next, at least one of them is going to be mistaken.

What matters is not only who is right. It is what being wrong would cost.

On most days the cost is small. You pick the wrong restaurant, you back the wrong team, you predict that a product will sell and it does not. You feel a little foolish, you adjust, you carry on. Those mistakes are cheap enough that confidence costs almost nothing, and it is fine to be bold.

Some decisions are different. They cannot be walked back. A crossing in moving water is one of them. So is a promise to a customer you cannot keep, a sum of money that will not come back, a word said in anger to someone who matters. Being wrong there is not embarrassing. It is permanent.

Most of us spend our energy defending how sure we feel. Far fewer of us stop to ask the second question: if I am wrong about this, what happens, and can I recover from it? It is an uncomfortable question, because it asks us to imagine our own error before it has happened.

But it is the question that keeps people on the road. Being able to absorb a mistake is worth more than being certain you will not make one.

The friend who wants to wait an hour might be wrong. If he is, they lose an hour.