I Am Not Always Right, I Might Be Wrong, But I Learn From My Mistakes
I think a lot.
I talk a lot.
I write a lot.
I make conclusions.
I judge people.
Sometimes I speak with confidence because, based on everything I know at that particular moment, I genuinely believe I am right.
But let me make something very clear:
I am not always right.
I might be wrong.
Very wrong, sometimes.
And strangely enough, I don’t think admitting that makes me weaker.
I think refusing to admit it would.
Because I am human.
I have incomplete information, imperfect judgment, emotions, biases, expectations, desires, anger, love, disappointment, and all the other things that make human thinking wonderfully complicated—and occasionally spectacularly stupid.
So yes.
I will make mistakes.
The important question is not whether I make them.
The question is:
What do I do after I realize I was wrong?
My answer is simple: I learn.
My Past Self Was Not Perfect
One reason I keep writing is because I want a durable record of my thinking.
And that means something uncomfortable:
I am also creating a durable record of my mistakes.
Good.
Let them remain.
Perhaps years from now I will open an old article and think:
“What the hell was I thinking?” 😄
That’s fine.
Actually, I hope it happens occasionally.
Because if I can look at something I wrote ten years ago and recognize that my thinking was incomplete, perhaps I learned something during those ten years.
Growth creates disagreement between different versions of ourselves.
The Krisna of today does not necessarily have to agree with the Krisna of five years ago.
And the Krisna twenty years from now may look at today’s writing and shake his head.
I hope he is wiser than me.
Why wouldn’t I?
Being Wrong Is Different From Staying Wrong
Everyone makes mistakes.
That part isn’t particularly interesting.
What matters is whether we remain committed to the mistake after reality exposes it.
There is an enormous difference between:
“I was wrong.”
and:
“I know I was wrong, but my ego won’t allow me to admit it.”
The first is human.
The second is the dangerous qarin.
Sometimes people spend years defending a bad decision simply because admitting the mistake would injure their pride.
They defend failed relationships.
Failed business decisions.
Bad investments.
Wrong opinions.
Wrong judgments about people.
Even obvious lies.
Not because they still believe them.
But because they have already invested their identity into being right.
I don’t want to live like that.
If reality proves me wrong, reality wins.
Simple.
Sometimes Life Has to Slap Me First
Of course, saying this is easier than actually doing it.
Sometimes I don’t immediately recognize my mistake.
Sometimes Allah has to teach me the lesson repeatedly.
The first warning comes.
I ignore it.
The second comes.
I rationalize it.
The third comes.
I become annoyed.
Then eventually life hits me hard enough that I finally sit down and say:
“Ah.”
“So THAT was the lesson.”
Humans are funny creatures.
We ask Allah for guidance and then complain when the guidance arrives disguised as consequences.
But some lessons cannot be learned from books.
They have to hurt (for us to realise).
Money Has Taught Me Lessons
Business has taught me this repeatedly.
You can make calculations.
Build projections.
Create plans.
Look at the numbers.
Believe something should work.
Then reality arrives and says:
No.
Customers behave differently.
Expenses become higher than expected.
People disappoint you.
Employees don’t perform the way you imagined.
A supposedly brilliant idea produces almost nothing.
What should I do then?
Keep throwing money at it because I don’t want to admit I was wrong?
No.
At some point, intelligence means updating the plan.
Maybe the idea wasn’t bad.
Maybe the timing was.
Maybe execution was wrong.
Maybe I chose the wrong people.
Maybe I misunderstood the market.
Or maybe the entire idea was simply stupid.
That’s possible too.
Learn.
Adjust.
Continue.
People Have Taught Me Even More Expensive Lessons
Some of the most expensive mistakes aren’t financial.
They’re human.
You trust someone.
You believe their words.
You think:
“This person is different.”
Then eventually you discover that your judgment was wrong.
That hurts differently.
Money can often be earned again.
Trust is harder.
Sometimes I have believed kindness would create kindness.
It didn’t.
Sometimes I believed helping someone would make them appreciate the help.
It didn’t.
Sometimes I believed loyalty would automatically produce loyalty.
Again…
Nope.
And this is where bitterness becomes tempting.
After enough disappointment, you can conclude:
“Never trust anyone again.”
But that would be another mistake.
The better lesson is not:
Everyone is terrible.
The better lesson is:
I need better judgment.
There is a difference.
I Can Be Wrong About People I Dislike Too
This is important.
We usually talk about being wrong when we trusted someone too much.
But we can also be wrong in the opposite direction.
Maybe someone I thought was arrogant was simply awkward.
Maybe someone I thought didn’t care was dealing with problems I couldn’t see.
Maybe someone I judged harshly deserved more understanding.
Maybe I interpreted silence as hostility.
Maybe I assumed motives that weren’t there.
If new information proves that I judged someone unfairly, then I should correct myself.
Why?
Because truth matters more than protecting my ego.
Being Intelligent Does Not Make Me Infallible
This may be one of the easiest traps for intelligent people.
When you are frequently right, you start expecting yourself to be right.
Then confidence quietly becomes arrogance.
You stop checking.
You stop listening.
You dismiss people too quickly.
And ironically, intelligence becomes the very reason you make stupid decisions.
Because you become too confident in your ability to avoid them.
I don’t want that.
No matter how intelligent I think I am, I remain a human being operating with incomplete information.
There will always be something I don’t know.
Allah says:
“And mankind has not been given of knowledge except a little.“
(Qur’an 17:85)
That is humbling.
Human civilization knows astonishing things.
We split atoms.
Map genomes.
Send machines beyond Earth.
Build artificial intelligence.
And Allah still reminds us:
You have been given only a little knowledge.
So what exactly am I supposed to be arrogant about?
Even My Spiritual Understanding Can Be Incomplete
This matters especially when writing about Allah.
I can reflect.
I can interpret my experiences.
I can wonder why certain things happened.
I can write what I felt.
But I should always leave room for:
“Allah knows better.”
Because I see one page.
Allah knows the entire book.
Something I interpret as punishment might eventually become protection.
Something I interpret as a blessing might actually become a test.
Someone I desperately want may be terrible for me.
Someone I initially dislike may become important.
The Qur’an says:
“Perhaps you dislike something which is good for you and like something which is bad for you. Allah knows and you do not know.”
(Qur’an 2:216)
That sentence could probably explain half of my mistakes.
Allah knows, and I do not know.
Mistakes Are Tuition
I have started thinking about mistakes as tuition.
Education costs money.
Experience costs mistakes.
Sometimes the tuition is cheap.
You lose an afternoon.
Sometimes it costs money.
Sometimes it costs a relationship.
Sometimes the tuition includes sleepless nights and tears.
Expensive course.
😄
But if I paid for the lesson, I might as well learn it.
The truly tragic mistake is paying the tuition and refusing to attend the class.
If someone betrays me and I learn nothing about boundaries, I wasted the pain.
If a business fails and I learn nothing about business, I wasted the money.
If I hurt someone and learn nothing about my own behavior, I wasted the guilt.
Pain should produce information.
Mistakes should produce upgrades.
Otherwise we simply repeat them.
A Believer Is Allowed to Return
Islam itself gives enormous importance to returning after wrongdoing.
Human beings sin.
Human beings fail.
Human beings make terrible decisions.
Yet Allah did not create a religion in which one mistake permanently destroys a person.
There is tawbah.
Return.
Correction.
The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said:
“Every son of Adam commits sin, and the best of those who commit sins are those who repent.”
(Jami’ at-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2499; Sunan Ibn Majah, Hadith 4251)
I love the realism of that teaching.
It doesn’t describe perfect humans.
It describes humans who fall and return.
That is something I understand.
I am not interested in pretending I never fell.
I am interested in getting back up.
I Reserve the Right to Change My Mind
This should probably be written somewhere prominently on my blog:
I reserve the right to change my mind.
An article represents what I thought when I wrote it.
Tomorrow I may receive new information.
Next year I may gain new experience.
Ten years from now I may understand the subject completely differently.
Changing my mind does not necessarily mean I was dishonest before.
It may simply mean I learned.
There is nothing honorable about remaining consistently wrong merely for the sake of consistency.
If yesterday’s Krisna was wrong, today’s Krisna is allowed to correct him.
And tomorrow’s Krisna is allowed to correct both of us.
😄
That is the entire point of learning.
But I Don’t Want to Use “I’m Human” as an Excuse
There is another side to this.
Saying “everyone makes mistakes” can become an excuse for irresponsibility.
I don’t want that either.
If my mistake hurts someone, learning from it doesn’t automatically erase the damage.
Sometimes I need to apologize.
Sometimes I need to repair what I can.
Sometimes there are consequences I simply have to accept.
Growth doesn’t mean escaping accountability.
Growth means allowing accountability to change you.
There is dignity in saying:
“Yes. I did that. It was wrong. I understand why it was wrong.
I will try not to repeat it.”
No elaborate excuses.
No rewriting history.
No blaming everybody else.
Just ownership.
The Person I Fear Becoming
I don’t fear becoming someone who occasionally makes mistakes.
That is unavoidable.
I fear becoming someone who can no longer recognize his mistakes.
Someone whose ego has become so large that every failure must be somebody else’s fault.
Someone who interprets every criticism as an attack.
Someone who surrounds himself only with people who agree.
Someone incapable of saying:
“Maybe you’re right.”
That person cannot learn anymore.
And when a human stops learning, intelligence slowly becomes useless.
So Read My Writing as a Journey
This is how I want Allahservant.com to be read.
Not as scripture.
Not as a collection of unquestionable declarations.
This is a journal.
A durable record of thinking.
Some pages will contain wisdom.
Some will contain anger.
Some will contain wounds.
Some will contain conclusions I may later reconsider.
Some may even contain complete nonsense.
Welcome to being human.
But together, they document something real:
the evolution of one person’s mind while trying to understand life, people, himself, and Allah.
I would rather leave an honest record of growth than manufacture a fake record of perfection.
I Am Not Always Right
So let this article remain here as a disclaimer to everything else I write.
I am not always right.
I might be wrong.
You might know something I don’t.
Life might prove my theory completely incorrect tomorrow.
And when that happens?
I hope I have enough humility to admit it.
Then I’ll learn.
I’ll adjust.
I’ll write again.
Maybe I’ll even leave the old article online so I can look at it years later and laugh.
Because perfection was never the goal.
Growth is.
I am a human being.
I make decisions with the knowledge I currently possess.
I make mistakes.
I get hurt.
Sometimes I hurt others.
I misunderstand.
I reconsider.
I repent.
I learn.
And then I continue walking.
Because perhaps wisdom is not reaching a point where we never make another mistake.
Perhaps wisdom is becoming increasingly difficult to fool with the same mistake twice.
So yes:
I am not always right.
I might be wrong.
But I learn from my mistakes.
And as long as Allah gives me another morning, another experience, another lesson, and enough consciousness to recognize where I went wrong…
I intend to keep learning.
Until there are no more pages left for me to write.
May Allah Bless You to be free form the Hell’s Fire.
