Arguments reveal more than truth, they reveal the character. Will I be arrogantly right, humbly wrong, or the inverse? Will I lose while winning, or win while losing? Here is my recent counsel to myself, offered up for your critique and possible benefit.
On insignificant arguments:
When certain you’re right, don’t let it show. At least feign a little uncertainty. When the truth is uncovered, it should be the truth that is remembered. If what is remembered is your rightness, it has bought you nothing but a reputation for pompousness in insignificant matters.
On significant arguments:
No significant matter appeals finally to your authority. Here your rightness matters even less, and the higher authority receives the appeal. The preacher must appeal to the text, the lawyer to the law, the brother to the father, the father to God. The truth of the authority is what must be remembered, not your rightness. When it is discovered, the wrong party will carry it with him as his own authority grows. If concluded by your own authority alone, what carries forward is a remembrance of tyrannical opinion enforced.
On losing an argument:
When it turns out that you are wrong, do not yield to embarrassment. Embarrassment stems from the damage suffered by your rightness, which was a disordered pursuit at the start. Instead, enjoy the experience of having been wrong and set right. Think, “ah… this too is an experience, and I shall need many such to one day be wise. In this way too shall a day pass, and not unpleasantly.”
In all cases, let truth be the victor, not ego. When found, truth brings gain to all. Handled well, the wrong gain wisdom; the right, a name for gentleness and humility.
“Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city.”
Proverbs 16.32 – NIV
“Bear all things as if they were not only endurable but even desirable, and you will find that pain and irritation vanish.”
Seneca – Letters to Lucilius, Letter 78.13
Call to Action
If this letter to your younger, red-faced, argument-losing self just saved you from typing the next furious 3 a.m. reply; if it handed you the quiet weapons of silence, clarity, and a well-timed exit, then you already know whose screen needs it tonight. Copy the link right now.
Send it to the friend who still takes every bait, the group chat that’s one notification away from civil war, or drop it on your own timeline as a public vow to argue better from this day forward. One share could spare ten keyboards and a hundred relationships. — D.S. Cook
https://growingsemistoic.wpcomstaging.com/2025/09/20/apostoic-advice-to-the-self-on-arguments/
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