My current read, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, is a little deeper than a laughter inducing-Bill Bryson book; as such, it requires reading in smaller doses and with an alert brain. Author Kathryn Schulz interestingly brings up how the word er meant “to move or go” in ancient Indo-European. The linguistic road led to er becoming the root for the Latin verb errare, which means to wander, go astray, or be wrong.
In her book Schulz sets out to explain why being wrong is actually a good thing. She discusses 2 classic wanderers of Western culture: the wandering Jew and the knight errant. The Jew is forced to roam the earth; the knight is on a quest driven by curiosity.
To err is to wander, and wandering is the way we discover the world; and, lost in thought, it is also the way we discover ourselves. Being right might be gratifying, but in the end it is static, a mere statement. Being wrong is hard and humbling, and sometimes even dangerous, but in the end it is a journey, and a story. Who really wants to stay home and be right when you can don your armor, spring up on your steed and go forth to explore the world? True, you might * get lost along the way, get stranded in a swamp, have a scare at the edge of a cliff; thieves might steal your gold, brigands might imprison you in a cave, sorcerers might turn you into a toad * – but what of that? To fuck up is to find adventure […]
(insert this in place of quoted text for my version) * discover a new country, get your car stuck in the mud and then get invited in a house for some tea before 2 Maori guys help you recover your car, jump cartoon-style and try to simultaneously backpedal and turn around mid-air because you nearly stepped on some snake in Australia; student loans might steal your money, fate might give you a town job that turns out to be an entertaining summer, interests might turn you into a seafarer *