The unbearable rightness of being wrong: how do you admit fault in a post-shame world?
There’s a freezer at the back of my house that I didn’t want. When it was purchased, I protested in what could graciously be called a hissy fit. We didn’t need it. It was a useless extravagance. We weren’t the kind of people who ate leftovers, anyway. We were young, fun, vivacious, out every night at a new joint with a new group of friends.
A pandemic, six or seven lockdowns, and a newborn baby later, the freezer is arguably much more vital to the smooth running of our household than I am.
I’ve never been good at admitting I’m wrong, which is odd since I have had an awful lot of practice. I’m not so much a know-it-all as I am a know-it-a-littleand-say-it-loud.
Another example, the viral argument of wheels v doors. Within 30 seconds of hearing the problem I had declared that obviously there were more doors in the world. Anyone who entertained the notion that there could be more wheels in the world than doors was a fool! And from that moment
I found myself haunted by wheels. Everywhere I looked: wheels!
I was trapped in my own zerostakes version of The Tell-Tale Heart. I knew I was wrong but how do you admit it?
Millennials have a defined aesthetic to admitting fault – the Notes App apology. The Notes App apology is ubiquitous to the point that it is no longer truly necessary to actually read its content. You can assume, by the simple visual cue of a Notes App screenshot that the poster is admitting fault, has done soul-searching, is listening, committed to do better, and will be taking a short break to work on themselves. That itself is a problem.
As soon as an apology becomes formulaic it loses all potency. It now holds all the authenticity of the mumbled “sorry” of a four-year-old forced to apologise for smacking his brother – knowing full well that he intends to smack his brother again as soon as this repen
tance ceremony is over.
How, in a world where we’re wronger – louder and more often – than ever, are we to find the means to make a genuine apology?
It should be enough to admit fault, show remorse and detail how you will ensure the behaviour does not recur, but that’s boring. I’m not looking for a basic apology, I want the perfect apology. The child deep inside of me that never really learned to deal with being in trouble wants to admit that I’m wrong so well that everyone agrees that I was actually right all along and furthermore an untouchable moral paragon that should not be limited to mere correct/incorrect binaries.
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It’s good to feel a little bit bad when you’re wrong. It’s a small act of rebellion against a post-shame era. It shows you still care enough about getting things right. In blunt terms, it means you’re not an arsehole, particularly when it’s so easy to shrug off the error without a second thought.
Still, we fear admitting we’re wrong because we worry that people will realise that we aren’t perfect. As if they ever were under the mistaken impression that we were perfect.
What does it matter to me that there are actually a great number of wheels in the world or a freezer in our house? Nothing more than that acknowledging these things would require the death of my massive ego. Frankly, that feels awful. It’s shameful, it’s embarrassing. You went out on a limb and now it’s crashing to the ground.
So, what’s the right answer to admitting you’re wrong? The first and most important lesson – as always – is don’t be a big weirdo about it.
Not everything requires a giant mea culpa or a performative announcement. At some point, you are not apologising, you are finding a new way to express your ego. Understand the degree of your infraction and where it falls on the spectrum from “my bad” to the Notes App screenshot.
From there, the secret is just to be vulnerable and genuine, both easy things to fake.
Or, if that’s too hard, do what I do and settle for simply never being wrong ever again.
• James Colley is a writer and comedian.