Confidence

He who hesitates is a damned fool. Mae West

I wanted to write a few words about confidence. In life's endeavors, confidence is so critically important. Putting yourself out on a limb is what differentiates you from the crowd, what makes you interesting, but also what makes you vulnerable. Confidence is only required when you're at odds with someone. And in order to be confident, you have to risk being wrong.

Two things inspired this post. The first is that I recently filed an opposition to a motion, confident that I was right on a point of law -- but turned out to be wrong. The issue was the procedure for filing a certain motion in my local district court. I researched the issue. I asked other attorneys about the issue. I called the Court's clerk regarding the issue. I reviewed my prior filings on the issue. When I filed my papers I felt I was right.

But after I filed the paper, the opposing counsel said, simply, "If you had read the right rule, you'd have saved yourself a lot of work." The jerk didn't say what the "right rule" was, so I had to guess. When I guessed, I did about 5 seconds of research, and realized I was in error. GAH! So much for confidence. But on reading the rule more carefully, I knew I was not so wrong at all, though I cited the wrong rule. In fact, I have time to correct my mistake.

The second thing which inspired this post is the following quote recently posted on Facebook:

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” Charles Bukowski

As flippant as this sentiment is, it rings of some truth. Scientists have categorically shown the human activity is responsible for nearly irreversible climate change; yet the doubters are as vociferous as ever. Gay rights are popular and constitutional; yet the haters rally against them. Evolution is supported by incontrovertible evidence; yet intelligent design is institutionalized. (For more on evolution and climate change, please see (and support) the National Center for Science Education.) If only we could eliminate the dissenters, we could start to solve the problems! (I'm definitely going to write a blog post on dissent!)

Dissent is at the heart of our adversarial system of law and governance. To dissent, confidence is required. Proper dissent benefits both sides: without something to push against, the truth may never come out.

Let us be thankful for the fools; but for them the rest of us could not succeed. Mark Twain

But never let your dissent blind you to the evidence. (Evidence is another topic on which I plan to write.) When I did my research, there was a hole in it -- I was ignorant of path to the correct answer and relied on my limited knowledge. When I looked at the evidence (here in the form of the correct rule), I was able to correct my mistake. Such is the path of knowledge.

The moral of the story is: when you feel most confident, step back and consider who is the fool and who wise, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary, take the step and be prepared to learn and move on when proven wrong.

Your, Bear