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7 October 2026
When did you last change your mind about something important?
Not because somebody defeated you in an argument.
Not because you were forced to.
Simply because you discovered that you had been wrong.
It is a surprisingly difficult question.
As we grow older, we collect opinions almost as carefully as we collect memories. Some have come from experience. Some from family. Some from books. Some from things we heard so many times that we eventually stopped questioning them.
Then, occasionally, something happens.
We meet a person.
Read a book.
Travel somewhere.
Or simply live long enough to see a situation from the other side.
And suddenly, an opinion that felt permanent becomes less certain.
I think there is something beautiful about that.
Changing one’s mind is often treated as weakness. Perhaps it should sometimes be treated as evidence that the mind is still alive.
A closed mind protects what it already knows.
A curious mind asks what it may have missed.
Maybe wisdom is not having fewer questions as we grow older.
Maybe it is becoming more comfortable with saying:
“I may have been wrong.”
And perhaps that is one of the most liberating sentences a person can learn to say.
Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
