We all have experienced failure in one way or the other. There are times when we make mistakes, misunderstand someone, underestimate others, and overestimate ourselves. To err is human. Being wrong is easy. Admitting it is hard.
To use Kathryn Schulz's words, the author of Being wrong : adventures in the margin of error (New York: Ecco Press, 2010), "if you haven't experienced them, you haven't fully lived. As with love and loss, so too with error. Sure, it can hurt you, but the only way to protect yourself from that potential is by closing yourself off to new experiences and other people. And to do that is to throw your life out with the bathwater." (p. 200)
Schulz quotes the New York psychoanalyst Irna Gadd that our capacity to tolerate error depends on our capacity to tolerate emotion that require us to feel something: a wash of dismay, a moment of foolishness, guilt over our dismissive treatment of someone else who turned out to be right. True, we are too exhausted or too sad or too far out of our element to risk feeling worse. Rigidity serves to protect a certain inner fragility. (p. 199)
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