Where I’m At… OMG, I’ve Become My Dad!
I have so many memories of sitting around the dinner table talking about something that happened during the day. It could have been something at work, something in the news, something someone did, whatever. And I would explain what happened, why it was horrible, and why the person involved was obviously an idiot.
I was young. I knew everything.
My dad, meanwhile, would just keep eating.
“Yeah, but I don’t know all the facts.”
This drove me absolutely nuts.
No, Dad. You don’t understand. This happened. It was horrible. I’m telling you exactly what happened. What more do you need to know?
“Well, I don’t know all the facts.”
He’d say it in that very lawyerly way of his, as if he were sitting in a courtroom instead of eating dinner.
At the time, I thought he was being maddeningly cautious.
Now I’m his age.
And, OMG, I’ve become my dad.
I find myself saying it all the time:
“Well, I don’t know all the facts.”
Something happens and my immediate reaction isn’t necessarily outrage anymore. It’s, Huh. I wonder what actually happened.
Part of the reason this blog rarely gets into social or political issues is precisely because of this. I don’t know all the facts.
Take whatever the latest controversy is at Cornell. I don’t know all the facts of what happened, what didn’t happen, what was said, what wasn’t said, or what happened before or after the part that made it onto the internet. So I’m probably not going to immediately form an opinion and get outraged about it.
Same thing with some new policy from some administration. I may eventually decide that I think it’s a good policy or a terrible policy. But first I’d like to know what the policy actually says, why it was adopted, what problem it’s supposed to address, and what the consequences are.
That doesn’t mean I have no responsibility to become informed. There are plenty of issues that matter enough that I should do the work and learn about them.
But I’ve actually gone a step further than my dad.
I don’t have to form an opinion at all.
That’s the part I don’t think I understood when I was younger.
Take the Cornell situation again. Something happened—or didn’t happen—at a fraternity at Cornell. I don’t need to turn that into a referendum on every fraternity, every college student, every guy, every woman, or society as a whole.
Maybe what happened was terrible. Maybe it wasn’t what it initially appeared to be. Maybe there’s a complicated story somewhere in between.
I don’t know all the facts.
And even if I did know all the facts, I don’t necessarily need to extrapolate that one event into some grand theory about the world.
I remember a Supreme Court justice—I can’t remember which one—making a point along these lines about deciding the actual issue before the Court rather than turning it into a decision about every larger issue surrounding it.
That idea has stuck with me, even though I’m applying it to something much less consequential than constitutional law.
Sometimes something is just the thing that happened.
That’s it.
One of the most freeing things I’ve discovered in later adulthood is that I don’t have to have an opinion about everything someone puts in front of me.
The internet seems to operate on the opposite principle. Something happens, and within fifteen minutes we’re all expected to know exactly what it means, who is to blame, what it says about society, and what we should be outraged about next.
I’m increasingly comfortable saying:
“Well, I don’t know all the facts.”
And sometimes:
“I don’t know enough to have an opinion.”
And occasionally, perhaps most importantly:
“I don’t need to have an opinion.”
Dad, I’m sorry.
You were right.
But you could have been a little less annoying about it at dinner.
