tests of surety

we go through our 20 or so years of life and it easily slips our minds that we are constantly being tested: by our actions, or by our words. how does it make us feel when we do things right? nothing.

but how does it make us feel when we do things wrong?

i had a dialogue with a guy in my department today. he was asking me about something that he REALLY should have been able to check himself (but that's besides the point). what he asked me required a program called MRP, and though being at the company for 3.5 months (i'm TWO weeks from leaving the company), i still have not been given access to it, so i don't bother really asking for it. anyway, he continued to ask me stuff, but it got to a point where he wasn't being clear with his questions and asking me all sorts of random stuff. i didn't know how to answer him, and i just said some stuff, hoping to just satisfy him. yet when i said that, i got this wrenching feeling in my heart, this feeling of unsureness. do i really know what i was talking about? no i didn't.

sure enough, i gave a wrong answer. he responded once with "that's the wrong answer", and i ended up having to cover up my wrong answer with some reasoning about what i said.

it's a petty story, but do you see the problem? how sure of you are of yourself? it's just silly that all these years we are being trained and taught and EXPECTED to grow, because that's the right thing to do. what if you got it all wrong? all this VALUABLE experience, all this time and energy and effort put forth to it, and in the end, we aren't even SURE of ourselves?

then we ask.. who are we, and what good can we do?