I sent the shortest email ever today:
Jeff,
You’re right.
All the best,
George Stocker
The details aren’t really important. What is important is that I meant every word. It’s really hard to send a geniune email that short. When’s the last time you let someone else win an argument without a fight (spouses don’t count)? We don’t, it’s not in our nature. Since forever, we’ve been ingrained with the idea that we need every little personal victory we can get. Our positions are as good as our private property, and anyone who negates them is trespassing, and must be persecuted.
And that’s exactly how I felt, before today. I didn’t undergo some buddha zen thing. I was just wrong. Even now as I type these words, I want to qualify that statement, I want to say that I was only ‘somewhat’ wrong, or that I was just misunderstood. But neither is true.
I was completely, totally, and utterly wrong.