What If I’m Wrong About Everything?

I used to have all the answers. Now I'm facing questions I can't afford to get wrong.

The older I get, the less certain I become. And now I’m facing a decision where being wrong could cost me everything.

I used to know a lot of things.

I mean, I really knew them.

Back when I was a fledgling chiropractor, I’d discovered something that resonated with me so deeply that I just knew it was true.

And if you didn’t believe the same thing, well, we were going to have a conversation.

A long conversation.

I could spend hours trying to convince you. I wasn’t necessarily trying to be argumentative. I just couldn’t understand how you couldn’t see what was so obvious to me.

I’d found something wonderful, and I wanted everybody else to see it too.

Of course, looking back, I wonder how much of that was about sharing something wonderful and how much was about needing you to agree with me.

When I became a newly saved Christian, it was pretty much the same thing.

I went all in.

I’ve never been particularly good at doing things halfway. When something resonates with me, I embrace it. Completely.

But Christianity brought another frustration. I was surrounded by people who said they believed one thing but didn’t seem to live accordingly.

That bothered me.

I’ve always believed that your thoughts, beliefs, and actions should be congruent. If you say you believe something, shouldn’t your life reflect it?

I still think there’s something to that.

But I’ve become a little less rigid about Christianity over the years. And my understanding of chiropractic has expanded considerably.

I still believe deeply in chiropractic. But I’ve learned that it isn’t the only way to reach better health.

Imagine that.

The guy who could spend hours explaining why he was right eventually discovered there might be other ways of looking at things.

Apparently, you can teach an old dog new tricks.

It just takes a while.

Never Say Never

I’ve always had this belief that you should never say never.

Because the minute you declare that you would never do something, the universe seems to take it as a personal invitation.

“Oh, really? Let’s see about that.”

I’ve always feared that one day I’d have to make certain decisions about my own health.

I’ve watched people close to me go through cancer treatment. I’ve watched people die. And those experiences have left me with a fear that the treatment itself could be what kills me.

The mother of my children, died from cancer. I’ve written about that experience before, and I’m not going to retell the whole story here. But you don’t go through something like that without it changing you.

And then there was my dad.

He came to visit, and I knew there was a health concern we needed to address.

Initially, I took him to Paul Goldberg, a chiropractic and nutrition practitioner. He suspected my dad might have cancer, so I took him down the conventional medical route.

Within a month, my dad was dead.

I don’t know that I can say the medical treatment caused his death. But I can tell you that the experience stayed with me.

How could it not?

And somewhere along the way, I developed a fear of ever having to make those same choices for myself.

Well, here I am.

The universe apparently remembered.

It’s Different When It’s You

I’ve spent my professional life believing in the body’s ability to heal itself.

And I still believe that.

If I were making these decisions with nobody else depending on me, I know what I’d want to do.

I’d go all in.

My way.

Trust the body’s ability to heal. Use natural methods. Do what I’ve spent much of my life believing in.

But here’s where things get complicated.

I have people who love me. People who depend on me financially.

And while I’ve come to terms with the fact that my life will eventually end, regardless of what I do, I don’t want to let those people down.

I don’t want to die because I was too hard-headed to listen to advice.

That’s what worries me.

Not simply the possibility of dying, but the possibility that my stubbornness could play a part in it.

And that’s a difficult thing to admit when you’ve spent a lifetime trusting your own judgment.

The Problem With Being Right

I’ve been thinking about how many things I was absolutely certain about when I was younger.

Christianity. Chiropractic. Health. Healing.

I wasn’t pretending to believe those things. I believed them with everything I had.

And over the years, my understanding changed.

Not necessarily because everything I believed was wrong. But because I learned more.

I discovered there were things I hadn’t considered. Other ways of understanding the same subject. Possibilities I might once have dismissed without giving them much thought.

And the strange thing is, the more I’ve learned, the less certain I’ve become.

I knew more answers when I knew less.

There’s some irony in that.

Now I’m facing perhaps the most consequential decisions of my life, and I find myself wanting to do what I’ve always done.

Go all in.

Trust what I believe.

Follow my own path.

Except this time, I can’t help wondering whether that certainty might be getting in my way.

What if the body’s ability to heal is something I can believe in deeply without assuming it can overcome everything on its own?

What if there are things I haven’t considered?

What if some of the advice I’m reluctant to accept deserves a closer look?

And what if the very thing I’ve always considered one of my strengths—my willingness to stand by my convictions—is also something I need to question?

So What If I’m Wrong?

I don’t have a tidy answer to any of this.

I’m still working through it.

And I don’t think becoming more open-minded means I have to abandon everything I’ve believed.

Maybe it just means being willing to look at something again.

To listen without immediately preparing my argument.

To consider the possibility that someone else might know something I don’t.

That was difficult enough when the subject was chiropractic or Christianity.

It’s considerably more difficult when the subject is my own life.

Because there’s a difference between being willing to admit you’re wrong in a conversation and being willing to reconsider a decision that could determine how much time you have left with the people you love.

I’ve spent much of my life learning that I don’t have all the answers.

Now I have to decide whether I can actually live by that realization.

I still believe in the body’s ability to heal.

I still have my convictions.

And I still have a stubborn streak that isn’t likely to disappear anytime soon.

But I also have people I love, and people who love me.

And I want to be around for them.

So maybe the question isn’t whether I’m wrong about everything.

Maybe it’s whether I’m willing to find out where I’m wrong before it’s too late.

I don’t know.

And for once, maybe that’s an acceptable place to start.

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Live Long and Prosper,

-Dan

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