It’s probably because it’s painful that we don’t do it very often. But when was the last time you thought about a moment when whatever you said or did was wrong? Like, really, really, really wrong?

Maybe you were gung-ho about invading Iraq. Maybe you confidently sold a bunch of cryptocurrency in 2014 before the crash that you were sure was coming. Maybe you fell for a scam or you got caught up in bad company. Maybe you’re older and grew up with a negative view of Martin Luther King Jr and his “agitation tactics.” Maybe you, in some college phase, were optimistic about the potential of Hugo Chavez or some other dictator. 

The point is: You have had moments when you were wrong. It happens to all of us. And yet, as we’ve talked about before, we struggle with coming to terms with it, despite its universality. Clearly, it wasn’t easy for Seneca to come to terms with how badly he misjudged Nero. Don’t you think Marcus Aurelius had at least a little bit of trouble seeing the truth about Lucius Verus or Avidius Cassius? 

Admitting you have been wrong about something can be very uncomfortable, especially the more public your error was. But we can’t shy away from the reality of that uncomfortable truth. If anything, we have to deliberately seek out this discomfort...because wisdom, at the very minimum, is about not making the same mistake twice. If Marcus had been able to wrestle with his blindness to certain people’s flaws, might he have been able to avoid disaster with his son Commodus? Nowhere in Seneca’s writings—in his extensive personal correspondence—does he deal with his complicity in Nero’s misdeeds. Had he been willing to discuss it, probe it, might he have acted sooner, more overtly? This self-reflection and self-criticism—which Seneca claimed to do nightly—might have saved many lives...including his own. 

We are all wrong from time to time. We all have held stupid and utterly incorrect opinions. There is some shame in that, but the truly shameful thing is to deny that it happened and refuse to learn from the experience. Which is why we have to take some time to think about our own thinking, and let the acknowledgement of the errors of our ways make us better.