The Right, the Wrong, & the Drama

At the time I am writing this essay, there is a movie currently showing in theaters called “The Drama” starring Robert Pattinson and Zendaya (don’t worry, no spoilers, I haven’t seen it yet). In the trailer, Rob (cool if I call you Rob?) and Zendaya play an engaged couple who are having dinner with another couple that they are friends with. At one point in the dinner, one of their friends asks a truth-or-dare style question:

“What is the worst thing you have ever done?” Hijinks ensue.

I found myself immediately drawn to this plot concept (not drawn enough to rent it for $14.99 in this economy, but enough to patiently wait until it is free to stream), and immediately thought to myself, what would my response be?

I remember being struck by the realization that this question would be difficult to answer. Not because I wouldn’t be able to come up with anything, but because I wouldn’t be able to pick just ONE. While I’m not about to confess to a crime or anything remotely illegal (relax, Mom), I think one of the most interesting things about human beings is the extent to which we can experience growth, change and, most importantly, regret over things that, at the time, we thought represented us well.

While people talk ad nauseum about how much we humans change as we age and how our brains “fully form” over time, I don’t think people talk nearly enough about the reckoning that comes after the changes have occurred.

The dichotomy between enjoying who we have become due to the impact of our life experiences and the intense regret/heart-pounding embarrassment that comes with remembering those same exact experiences can be truly immense.

Sydney! Stop bloviating and get to the juicy part where you confess what you did! 

Alright, alright, I’ll give you some examples.

When I was 19 years old, a freshman in college, I had a professor who I thought didn’t like me. I also had a blog (hello, 2010), and on that blog I wrote some truly cruel and scathing posts about her that I remember thinking were so clever at the time.

She, of course, found out about the posts I had made. Do I think the personal thoughts of a 19 year old college freshman altered the course of her existence, or changed how she viewed herself? Doubtful. But the things I wrote about her were very inexplicably mean, and I cannot imagine what it must have been like to read such pointed and cruel descriptions of yourself.

The worst part about this story, in my opinion, isn’t even what I wrote about her. The most painful part of this memory is that not only did she continue to teach my classes and grade my assignments as though she had never read the cruel things I was actively writing about her at the time, but she didn’t even tell me she had read them.

She passed me through multiple classes of hers without ever breathing a word about the things she knew I’d written on the internet. The posts stayed up for nearly ten years before I remembered I’d even written them, or found out she’d read them. It disturbs me beyond measure that I not only had the capacity to write such mean things about someone, but that I could write those things and then casually forget I ever even wrote them.

Another time, in my mid-20s, in an effort to impress someone I really wanted to be close friends with (lets call them ‘Lindsey’), I criticized someone else in ways that I thought would make Lindsey laugh. The criticisms weren’t even true, they were just edgy and, I thought, funny in the snarky way she’d love to read and gossip about later.

However, in the karmic way that life loves to knock our legs out from under us as we stand, I sent everything to the person I was talking about. I think about this no less than once each week, and it has been nearly a decade since this happened. I think about how, just for the sake of a joke, I might have made a cruel and lasting impact on someone I hardly knew, in a way that might have, even if for one moment, made them ashamed of something as innocent as their hobby.

I could honestly fill entire pages with the stories of personal, social, financial and moral regrets that keep me awake at night and ruin my quiet moments. However, I’m not telling you these stories in an effort to martyr myself, or to make you respond, awe, it’s OK, we all make mistakes, you’ve changed, forgive yourself. 

I tell you these stories because I think it is more important now than ever that we as people make the effort to not only learn from our mistakes, but to recognize, normalize and verbalize when we have been wrong.

Refusing to admit when we have ever been wrong has proven to be detrimental to the American people since the Trump administration took office in 2025. It somehow became more acceptable for people to pretend to still support a sex-offending, war-crime-committing pedophile whose blatant lies have (and will continue to) cost the lives of thousands of innocent people, instead of admitting that they might have been duped by a man who lied to them.

People would rather cut ties with their loved ones, and double-down on reprehensible behaviors from the White House, the likes of which they would never allow to happen in their own households, than admit they made a mistake and perhaps regret the vote they chose to make.

It has become so “embarrassing” to be proven wrong that many people would rather go to their graves insisting that they have always been right. It is not weapons and warfare that will cause irreparable harm to our lives for the foreseeable future, but instead insolence, willful ignorance and righteousness. We have to work together to figure out a way to be better at being wrong.

I recently participated in a live debate. I do this often, and I also do my absolute best to research in good-faith, as it is important to me to be as honest as possible, even when the truth is inconvenient for my beliefs. After this debate, my good friend Gary called me and told me that he needed to talk to me about a point I had made in the middle of debate.

“I’m not trying to attack you or anything, you know I respect you, and I agreed with a lot of what you said, but that one point you made simply wasn’t true. I looked everywhere, and I can’t find any sources that back up what you said.”

While my first instinct was to be very surprised by this as, like I stated, I would never intentionally lie for the sake of a win, I also heard the conviction in Gary’s voice. He really needed to tell me this.

And I really needed to hear it.

Gary, my good friend, a person I consider one of my most respected confidants, was correct. And, as it turns out, I was wrong.

Did the sky open up, and lightning strike me dead?

Did a cosmic wave of shame send me to an early grave?

Did I yell and scream at Gary, thus vindicating my correctness?

No.

In a later conversation, I did my best to thank him for bringing the oversight to my attention, and we proceeded to have an hour-long conversation about the times we remember being proven wrong about things that shocked us. The feeling I had when I realized I’d stood behind an incorrect conviction hurt. And it will hurt again when, probably within the next 24 hours, I’m proven wrong about something totally different.

In this life, we are guaranteed to make mistakes. We will live and we will learn. We will grow and, if we are lucky, we will continue to change. As we navigate these bumps in the road, the most important thing we can do, in my opinion, is embrace them and learn from them as best as we can. Why live in willful ignorance, when you can instead avoid The Drama?