Either you’ve got everything all figured out, or you find yourself periodically reevaluating what you believe about things and where you stand in general. There is a third option, which deals with not paying attention, but we will leave that alone. Thirty-five years as a late-model monkey have led me to the conclusion that I do not have everything all figured out. There is a very good chance that I have everything much less figured out than you do. Because of this, I find myself frequently admitting that I am wrong about things, and having to adjust myself somewhat.
There are things that I know for sure, but the specificity of the precise way in which I know those things changes sometimes, too. Like, I know that it’s wrong to be cruel and spiteful, and by extension I know that it is wrong to be mean. There are times when someone says something in a mean way, but the thing that they say is actually correct. Probably the most damaging version of this phenomenon occurs in religion. Good and evil are much, much more easily confused than one would think it possible for them to be, and the reason is because of evil people who use morality as a pretext for cruelty.
I believe that I will quite possibly manufacture a small pizza for dinner tonight.
