Walk in the Glow of Each Other's Majestic Presence

I've been holding off talking much about Being Wrong, the book by Kathryn Schulz that is rocking my world of late, but these words really struck me and I want to note and share them while I'm looking at the right page (246):

...as seen from the outside, denying error looks irrational, irresponsible, and ugly, while admitting it looks like courage, and like honor, and like grace...

Sometimes in life we won't know the answers and sometimes we will know them but not like them. Our minds, no matter how miraculous, are still limited. Our hearts, no matter how generous, can't always keep us from hurting other people. In other words, denial isn't just about refusing to accept the difficult, complicated, messy external world. Nor is acceptance just about accepting the facts. It is also, and most importantly, about accepting ourselves.

I'll have an actual review as soon as I finish, but in the meantime, here's another passage that I want to capture:

As I noted at the beginning of this book, we take rightness to be our steady state, while experiencing error as an isolated incident, no matter how many times it has happened to us. This might be a pragmatic choice--just a strategy for getting through the day with a minimum of hassle--but it is also emotionally alluring. Constantly reckoning with the possibility that we are wrong requires remaining aware of the chasm between us and the universe. It compels us to acknowledge that we can't know with certainty the truth about each other or the world, beyond the certainty that, in the deepest and most final sense, we are alone. That explains why we work so hard to dodge reminders of our fallibility, and why we weather so uneasily even our relatively trivial mistakes.

I just learned that Heidi Galvin died yesterday of a heart attack. I haven't seen or spoken to her or John in almost twenty years, but I danced at her wedding and I am sad to hear that she is gone from the world.