Of Course It’s True

I embraced many beliefs when I was younger that later turned out to be entirely wrong.  Here are ten of my favorite misconceptions:

1. Every family uses a shared dish towel and passes it around the dinner table as needed. It’s wasteful to provide a napkin for each person’s individual use. When I was sixteen I invited a girlfriend home for dinner.  She was horrified by my family practice. She thought it was unhygienic. Five years later we were married anyway. At her insistence, I gave up the tradition I’d grown up with and now use napkins instead.
2. It is important to preserve your body by not working it any more than necessary. I avoided walking whenever I could.  Now I walk several miles a day.  For both health, and for fun.
3. Being smart is all that really matters for a successful life. I’ve since discovered that emotional IQ is much more important. If you can only have one skill, getting along well with others is now my top choice.
4. Everyone has a messy bedroom. As an adult, no one I have lived with has had a cluttered bedroom. Not even me anymore.
5. To encourage a child to improve you have to criticize or punish them regularly so they will not get a big head and lose their incentive to do better.  Well of course that was wrong.
6. Never praise a child. See #5 above.  Yes, really. And equally wrong.
7. You grow up, get married, have children, and live happily ever after, all of the time. Maybe you believed that one too.  I’m still chasing the fantasy.
8. Work is to be avoided at all costs. Retire as early as you possibly can. Currently, I still find that work provides an important social and intellectual outlet for me.
9. You can never talk to anyone about sex. Or birth control. Thankfully, that is simply not true.
10. Women are wonderful. Men are unpredictable.  When I was ten I invited ten girls, and one boy, to my birthday party.  (My mother insisted on the one boy.)  In my early twenties I had only female friends. Now I know that people of all genders can be wonderful, and also sometimes unpredictable.

I’m sure if you thought about it, you could compose your own list of the misconceptions you’ve held at various stages of your life.  Especially concerning topics you were never able to talk about. Life is a learning process, and the older I get the more I learn.

I’m glad there are a few advantages to being an octogenarian.

Alan