I recently came across a cocktail napkin bearing this wonderfully honest sentence: “I am not arguing. I am just explaining why I am right.”

It is funny because most of us recognize the character immediately. It may be a spouse, coworker or that relative who brings Thanksgiving pie and an unshakable opinion about everything. If we are honest, however, the character is also us. We may not say the sentence aloud, but our tone and increasingly detailed explanation often communicate it beautifully.

Why Being Wrong Feels So Wrong

The human mind does not naturally experience its beliefs as one possible interpretation. It experiences them as reality. We see what we see, remember what we remember and assume that any reasonable person, given the same facts, would reach the same conclusion. Disagreement can feel less like another perspective and more like someone failing to understand the obvious.

Ego—not simply boastfulness, but the part of us that protects a stable identity—intensifies this. If I am a competent, intelligent person, being wrong may feel inconsistent with who I am. So I explain more forcefully, sometimes louder, as though volume might finally awaken the truth in the other person.

For many of us, this began early. Children are rewarded for correct answers and sometimes shamed for mistakes. In some homes, admitting fault brings punishment, shame or loss of status. Slowly, “I was........

© The Saratogian