Actually, I Changed My Mind

THOUGHTS OUTSIDE THE OFFICE

I have changed my mind about enough things at this point that I really should stop using the words “always” and “never.” Those words have cost me too much dignity. Every time I announce that I will never do something, life apparently takes it as a personal challenge. I have said I would never tolerate things I later tolerated, never buy things I later bought, never care about things I later cared deeply about, and never become the kind of woman who spends money trying to make her forehead stop moving. Then I met thirty-eight-year-old sunlight and reconsidered my position.

I used to think changing your mind meant you had been wrong. Now I think that is a ridiculously childish way to look at it. Sometimes you were wrong. Sometimes you were spectacularly wrong. Sometimes you were so wrong that your former opinion should be sealed, expunged and discussed only in the presence of counsel. But sometimes you were perfectly reasonable based on what you knew at the time, and then life handed you additional evidence. We allow new evidence to change practically everything else. I am not sure why a human being is supposed to be the one thing that never gets an amended version.

Past Judith was especially confident. She knew exactly how she was going to parent children she had not yet raised. She knew what she would do in situations she had never experienced. She knew what kind of behavior she would never accept, how she would handle every professional problem, what mattered, what did not matter and exactly how other people ought to conduct themselves. I would love to put Past Judith on the witness stand now. Not because she was stupid. She simply had approximately six exhibits and was delivering a closing argument.

Hypothetical Judith is even worse. Hypothetical Judith handles everything beautifully. If you tell her a story about something terrible that happened to somebody else, she immediately knows what she would have done. She would have recognized the problem sooner, made the correct decision immediately, maintained perfect boundaries, said the exact right thing and then slept eight uninterrupted hours that night. Hypothetical Judith is a remarkable woman. Unfortunately, she has never actually had to do any of this shit.

Actual life is considerably less organized. Actual life gives you children with personalities you did not order, people who behave in ways you did not anticipate, jobs that look very different from the brochure, relationships that refuse to follow the flowchart, bills, emergencies, exhaustion and the occasional Tuesday where every intelligent thought you have ever had apparently leaves your body. Suddenly all those things you knew with absolute certainty become a little less certain. It turns out standing outside somebody else’s life with a clipboard is much easier than standing in the middle of your own holding three grocery bags while something is actively on fire.

I have also changed my mind about stupid things, which may be the clearest evidence that personal growth does not always require a dramatic soundtrack. I have bought things I once called a waste of money and then become offended when somebody suggested taking them away from me. I have worn things I swore I would never wear. I have changed my opinions about hair, furniture, technology, food, parenting, work, people and approximately seventeen beauty products. I am pretty sure half of adulthood is slowly becoming the person your younger self would have judged in a Walmart parking lot.

What amazes me is how uncomfortable people get when somebody simply says, “Yeah, I used to think that. I don’t anymore.” The internet has made this infinitely worse because the internet does not believe in personal development. The internet believes in exhibits. Somewhere right now Facebook is maintaining a beautifully indexed archive of every stupid opinion any of us expressed in 2012, patiently waiting for somebody to type, “THIS YOU?” Yes. That was me. I also had different eyebrows, questionable judgment and a Facebook album containing 146 photographs from one birthday dinner. We were all going through things.

Of course, I am not suggesting everybody should change their principles every six weeks depending on who invited them to dinner. There is a difference between reconsidering something and having the moral structure of warm pudding. Some beliefs should get stronger as you get older. Some things become clearer. But I no longer think consistency by itself is particularly impressive. A person can remain consistently wrong for an astonishing amount of time. Humans have demonstrated tremendous stamina in this area.

What I respect much more now is somebody who can say, “I was wrong about that,” without immediately constructing seventeen excuses. Or somebody who says, “I don’t know enough about that to have an opinion yet.” That sentence has apparently become endangered. We now receive eleven seconds of information about something and immediately report for duty as experts. Give us a headline, half a TikTok and two Facebook comments and we are prepared to reorganize the federal government.

Sometimes changing your mind means you learned something. Sometimes it means you finally experienced the thing you had been discussing from a comfortable distance. Sometimes somebody explained it better. Sometimes the facts changed. Sometimes you changed. And sometimes life simply walked into the room, flipped the table over and said, “Well, since you were so damn sure, let’s see how this works in practice.”

I hope I keep changing my mind. I hope forty-eight-year-old Judith looks back at some of the things I am completely convinced of right now and says, “Bless her heart, she really thought she had that figured out.” I hope she knows more than I know. I hope she has accumulated better evidence. I hope she has changed some opinions, abandoned some plans, picked up some others and learned enough to embarrass the current version of me at least occasionally.

Because I think that might actually be the goal. Not to spend an entire life proving that the first version of you was right, but to keep giving the next version permission to know better.

So if you ever hear me say, “I would never,” you have my permission to write it down.

Apparently that is when life starts drafting.

Judith L. Hampton

Attorney At Law

Hampton Law Firm

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