Preferred Fantasies

One way I can usually tell if I have “won” an argument is if/when the other person stops arguing. They usually say something like “I’ve got to do X” — meaning to imply something like “I don’t have the time to waste talking about this with you anymore”.

I think people who give up this way long to hold on to a fantasy of their own, and I do let them do that… and I did precisely that yet again today.

The funny thing is I think most people don’t realize that I rarely argue a point about which I am uncertain. I will gladly learn from other people who are more knowledgeable than I am, who have more experience, etc. But there are indeed some topics in which I have decades of experience and also advanced college (graduate) degrees, in which I have done huge amounts of research… — and even in these topics, I am always open to learn something new! Yet some people will simply walk away and continue to believe in their own preferred fantasies.

Somehow, I think it can’t really be that I am the only one who is not so utterly lost in believing in their own fantasy / illusion. It ought to be easy to show me that I am wrong about something, isn’t it?