Written by Jason Montoya. Posted in My Life.

Funny: What Appears To Be Right May Not Always Be Right

In 2011, a funny thing happened to my wife and me in the parking lot of Lowes. Sometimes we can absolutely be certain something is true, but be completely wrong. This story easily demonstrates this powerful lesson. Enjoy this silly story I wrote down six years ago about when things weren't what they seemed.

Today my wife and I went to Lowes to purchase insecticides to kill a nest of black widows in our backyard. We decided to take her 2002 Blue Ford Escape and, like normal, parked the car before we went inside to purchase the goods. After paying for our products, we went outside to our SUV to load our stuff and head home. The problem was my car remote was not working. I clicked the unlock, lock and panic button and no response.

Immediately I assumed the battery had died on the remote and Caitlyn proceeded to open the back window of the SUV. Apparently it was not locked, but as soon as she opened the window the car alarm siren went off. Since my remote was not working I went to the drivers side door to unlock the car and deactivate the alarm. The problem was my key was not working. It went in but would not turn at all. Immediately I assumed the alarm triggered some kind of locking mechanism keeping my key from working. It was our car, it should work.

Then it hit me, actually it hit Caitlyn and she said it. This was not our car. She noticed the stickers on the back window were missing. This was not our car! It was the same model, color, year, and make but it wasn't our car. We knew what our car looked like and what type of car it was, but it wasn't until we noticed some of the missing details that we realized what we knew to be true was actually false. We laughed at each other, and looked around to find the actual owner.

And this is life. We can be so sure of ourselves, but be completely wrong. And other times, our confidence can lead to us miss the small, but important details of our surroundings. An understanding of our own limitations and capacity for a skewed perspective, requires we keep ourselves open that we could be wrong, regardless of our confidence level. Doing so will foster better relations with those we care about, and others we disagree with.

Where in your life are you absolutely sure about something? What if you're wrong? Are you open to exploring this possibility?

Photo by David Menidrey on Unsplash