I have binging of late on reruns of NCIS.

I can’t explain or defend the habit. I blissfully glide along as the team “grabs their gear” to investigate each implausible case. I mentally note who makes the elevator walk to open each episode. I participate by precipitately guessing wrong on the solution to every problem. I blindly delight in the grade school badinage between these defenders of democracy as they struggle to thwart the myriad smart bad guys of the world.

Mostly though…

…I am intrigued by Jethro Gibbs’ striving to apply a numbered set of rules to the chaos he and his team seem to face daily.

These are rules he has mostly assembled from the wisdom of his dad and his first wife.

Mostly…

One rule comes late in the run of the show and it derives from Gibbs’ personal adult experience.

It’s Rule #51:

Sometimes you’re wrong.

It took me about 28 years to understand that rule. Soon after this dour epiphany, I recognized with some trepidation that it had taken me almost 30 years to reach the point where I believed I was making six of ten decisions correctly. That was humbling. Even more humbling was suspecting I would never achieve a seven out of ten success ratio. 40+ years later have confirmed my suspicions.

Luckily, one of the correct decisions was to surround myself with other people who also make six out ten decisions correctly and strive to get out of their way. Thus, I was mostly protected from many of my foolish moments.

Mostly…but not always…

Many…but not all…

Rule #51:

Sometimes you’re wrong.

As I age, I find when I acknowledge this rule and try to be righter, the world is generally a very generous place and space is made for me to do so.

I humbly suggest that members of congress might also find this to be useful…and right.