Beware of Certainty

Several years before his death, one of Mark Twain's publishers submitted prints of his hands to a person whose specialty was to read hand prints and, from that, produce a thorough description of that person's personality. Twain - Samuel Clemons - did not know this was being done; nor did the specialist know he was examining the hand prints of the world famous author. The results of the assessment of the so-called found this anonymous person to be, overall, a decent person of good character. However, there was one striking conclusion: the expert said the subject's hand prints indicated no sign of a sense of humor.


In retrospect, all of us can find such a conclusion to be quite amusing. After all, we are talking about Mark Twain, humorist and writer-extraordinaire. Such a professional assessment is not all that different from the one a critic made about a young and at the time unknown Fred Astaire when he said this thin man could "dance a little." The point is not that these experts where obviously way off the mark. I am sure all of us have at one time or another have made similar observations that later proved laughingly wrong. Rather, these and other reviews serve as a reminder that we all must be careful about putting too much stock in the views of others,


Most every day each of us are on the receiving of persons who share their views with great force and certainty. They "know" they are right and that's all there is to it. Further, because they seem to feel strongly about a particularly topic, we generally assume them to be right. We would be wiser not to be so accommodating. Often times, the force of an opinion does not necessarily match the degree of facts on which such a perspective is based. If we are to communicate more effectively, then we owe it ourselves and those around us to make a greater effort to go beyond whatever unsubstantiated certainty we might feel about a topic and make our views much more fact-based.