I am sitting at a table in a senior community center and engaging with a 92-year-old man who tells me, “I have only 30 percent hearing, so speak loudly.”
Not a problem, I say to myself, because God gave me a loud voice, and I will now use it. He uses his voice immediately to ask me whether I am looking forward to 2023. As I mull this, he answers his own question. “I am! You know why? In January, there will be political changes and a lot of news.”
I think we picked the wrong table for a relaxing lunch but “in for a penny, in for a pound,” I listened to him talk about Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Congress and more. He could be the poster adult for “know-betterers,” that person who always knows more and better than anyone else around him. As he pontificates about 2023, I am tempted to interrupt, but my parents taught me better, so I wait until he runs out of steam.
I am tempted to say that midterm results were mixed and that Republicans will not have the run of the land. When I finally do speak, I suggest we not talk politics. What I didn’t add was my disdain for “know-betterers,” who appear to be everywhere. That would require explaining my self-made-up term, and he likely wouldn’t have heard me.
Know-betterers are one of my biggest hindrances in conversing with people. They believe they know better about all sorts of things. I confess that sometimes I wear that mantle. Are you on the hunt for a dog? I can help with your breed pick. Want a good book? Tell me your tastes, and I’ll point you in a direction. Need a streaming choice? I’m savvy on that too. For casual topics like books or movies, know-betterers don’t bother me. They might be wrong, but the topics are of less consequence.
But it’s the other topics that are challenging where know-betterers won’t take a breath while explaining politics, climate change, social media and other weighty issues. Their certainty can vex even the most mild-mannered of us. There is no acknowledgment of what we don’t know or even that there are different ways to interpret the data.
Sometimes we need to catch ourselves on topics we didn’t realize we held strong views about. Recently I was discussing various styles of parenting. Is it better to rule with a firm hand to help children understand their limits or to empower children to discover their limits on their own?
If a child pushes another kid aside to get to the slide, do we say, “No pushing! You must wait your turn”? Or do we say, “As long as the pushed child isn’t hurt, we need to let Jane discover that her behavior brings bad tidings”?
Attitudes have changed about the best approach, which I saw when training my dogs. I trained two dogs within 11 years. With the first dog, I was told to bear down on the dog if he surfed the counters and scare the bejeebies out of him while yelling, “No.” It worked, and a lovely dog we had.
The second dog? We were to avoid sounding harsh and instead help the dog build self-esteem. He was to discover the right way to behave as we shepherded him along with positivity. He is also lovely, though in a different way.
Dogs, kids, new approaches, old approaches. … We know what we know, and we share our convictions.
But isn’t there a better way? What if we explored the topic rather than tried to nail the answer? What if we parked our know-betterer tendencies?
For example, on the topic of dry January, where people abstain from drinking alcohol, “explore” might mean wondering how it started and its longer-term effect. If someone with knowledge were to join the conversation, he might add that about one-third of U.S. adults partook in dry January in 2022, and participation is now international. That’s helpful and not overbearing.
Now comes the know-betterer who unintentionally halts the conversation. He cites the current rates of alcoholism, the potential use of opiate blockers to curb addiction, and the success rate of (Alcoholics Anonymous), somewhere between 25 percent and 50 percent.
Peppered with this information, we’ve lost the thread of conversation. A smart person with a boatload of statistics has overtaken the environment.
Can we put “exploration” back on our list for how we engage in 2023?
Know-betterers beware: There is a better way.
