Winging it, together
I’ve often thought of my experience of adulthood thus far as one of incrementally discovering that there's no institution, or walk of life, in which everybody isn't just winging it. Growing up, I assumed that the newspaper on the breakfast table must be assembled by people who truly knew what they were doing; then I got a job at a newspaper. Unconsciously, I transferred my assumptions of competence to (among others) people who worked in government. Then I got to know a few people who did – and who’d admit, after a pint or two, that their jobs involved staggering from crisis to crisis, concocting credible-sounding policies in cars en route to press conferences, exactly as portrayed in The Thick of It.1
So let’s embrace it! Let’s wing it, together, as best we can, and acknowledge that we’re doing so. Instead of playing blame games all the time, let us work to acknowledge our missteps and suggest better pathways forward for one another. Every day is a great experiment in this human life.