You know that old saying: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble––it’s what you know that ain’t so.”

Those of you who know me well know that I am actually shy (unless I’m on stage), and I hesitate to say something for certain unless I feel very strongly about the veracity of my thoughts. In other words, I hesitate to say anything unless I know for certain that it “IS so.” Even then, I’m often verbally slapped down by others, to the point that I simply turn away and let the ones who are practicing the “knowing what they know that ain’t so” behavior have the final word.

In organizational behavior terms, that syndrome is known as formulating “naive theories.” In other words, we “know” something, but it may not be verifiably true, and it may be contested by others who believe they “know” better than we do.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an appointment to have my pacemaker tested––much in the same way you go in periodically to have your oil changed in your automobile. The technician put my pacemaker through a series of tests. He first lowered the voltage until I almost fell off the chair like a robot in the “off” position, and then he raised it until I felt as though the hair on my head was standing on end. I begged him to make sure he returned the setting to what it had been when I walked into his office, feeling pretty good. He swore that he did.

The next morning when I bent down to put my pet cat Cookie’s food bowl on the floor, I nearly fainted, I was so dizzy and lightheaded. That condition continued for days. I periodically took my blood pressure, which kept getting lower and lower, and finally my blood pressure monitor indicated that my heart was in atrial fibrillation.

“How can that be?” I wondered. After all, the pacemaker implant was supposed to have taken care of that. But then I put my thought processes to work. The doctor had said he had severed the connections between the parts of my heart so that my faulty electrical tissue could no longer send erroneous messages and cause my heart to flutter, i.e., not beat in sinus rhythm.

“Aha!” I gave myself a high-five for my “eureka” thinking. The faulty electrical tissue is still there, I deduced, and it’s periodically sending out erroneous messages to cause the atrium to fibrillate (i.e., flutter). Of course, the pacemaker is keeping the blood pumping through the heart at a nice steady 70 beats a minute, without fail. I felt that I knew what was the problem, and that it WAS so. I had somehow (probably from drinking a frozen margarita) caused the electrical atrium tissue to go haywire.

Nevertheless, my friends––and my primary care physician––insisted that I see my cardiologist to determine what was happening. I saw him this morning, and he told me that what was happening was EXACTLY what I thought was happening. In other words, my “naive theory” was not so naive after all. (Unfortunately, I’ll have to bid a tearful goodbye to frozen margaritas from now on.)

So, dear friends, when I say something that I know IS so, please don’t shoot me down unless you have proof that what I think I know ain’t so. Thanks!