{"id":52,"date":"2019-09-24T18:55:58","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T18:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edscapades.com\/?p=52"},"modified":"2019-09-24T18:59:02","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T18:59:02","slug":"willful-delusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edscapades.com\/?p=52","title":{"rendered":"Willful Delusion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You got a long way to go, boy!<\/p>— Joshua<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

One day, as a teenager, I was riding my bicycle when I rode by Joshua, a younger boy from my neighborhood. Mounting his bike, he aggressively challenged me to a race from a nearby stop sign to a phone pole at the end of the block. He finished the challenge by brashly claiming that there was no way I could beat him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given our relative sizes, I knew he couldn’t possibly keep up with me, so I laughed out loud as I accepted the challenge. I gave him a small head start and then quickly passed him. As I arrived at the pole, I turned around to gloat — but he had turned his bike around and was heading in the opposite direction. “You got a long way to go, boy!” he yelled back at me, as if the race had been from the pole to the stop sign, rather than the other way around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Possibly thinking there had been some mistake, I turned and pedaled hard, passing him again before he reached the stop sign. Once again, as I reached it he had turned his bike around and was moving in the original direction — back towards the pole. “You got a long way to go, boy!” he yelled again, as if he were winning the race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We went back and forth several times; each time I passed him before he reached either end, and each time he simply turned around and acted as if I had lagged behind him. I tried yelling back at him that he was cheating, and that I’d beaten him several times, but he ignored me and continued to gloat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, I realized that he would never admit reality: that he had been easily beaten several times. I told him he had lost, but he yelled back that I<\/strong> was the one who had lost. As I rode away, he continued to celebrate his victory and how much better a cyclist he was compared to me, until his voice faded into the distance. There wasn’t any way I could think of to force him to admit the truth, so my only option was to ignore him and leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout my lifetime, I’ve seen this scenario repeated more times than I can count. Not just with children, but with plenty of adults as well. When it’s a convenient, desirable outcome, many people are all too willing to remain willfully in delusion. For example, a friend once claimed that smoking “natural tobacco” could not cause her any harm because it didn’t have any chemical additives. When I pointed out many reasons that was not true and pointed to the large body of scientific proof that she was wrong, she replied, “That’s true for you, but not for me.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remaining in willful delusion is never a good thing. We should always be examining our attitudes and viewpoints to check for it. If you’re on the receiving end, the important thing is to know when to just walk away. You can discuss facts and logic, but when someone simply refuses to admit the obvious truth the way Joshua did, there’s little point in continuing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You got a long way to go, boy! — Joshua One day, as a teenager, I was riding my bicycle when I rode by Joshua, a younger boy from my neighborhood. Mounting his bike, he aggressively challenged me to a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edscapades.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edscapades.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edscapades.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edscapades.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edscapades.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.edscapades.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57,"href":"https:\/\/www.edscapades.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edscapades.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edscapades.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edscapades.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}