A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but also more useful than a life doing nothing.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
How many mistakes have you made in your life?
I bet you cannot even begin to count them.
When we take into consideration the countless minutia mistakes that we make, the total amount we might make in a lifetime could be tens of thousands, if not more.
What is it specifically that is derived from having made so many mistakes, and by the tiniest of definitions, failing over and over again?
Each time that we try something, whether it is as simple as doing math in our head or typing on a keyboard without looking at the keys or navigating our way to somewhere we believe we have been once, and missing a direction or a thousand of other possible permutations, our net takeaway from making all of these mistakes is ultimately newfound knowledge.
The knowledge might be minuscule, predicated upon the mistake made, or it could be vastly profound, or anywhere in between.
These repeated errors, are continually updating a database within our minds upon which we stand, day after day, presumably seeking to make less of the same mistakes repeatedly, while simultaneously feeling empowered enough to venture into new territory, where we might very well make yet another mistake.
When we are trying to reconcile ourselves to the vast amount of errors that we have made over the course of our lives, we would be most wise to be understanding and forgiving of ourselves, for having made such mistakes, solely for the purpose of our own recognition that in our greatest triumphs, do we stand on the shoulders of all of the mistakes that we have made while we have been failing forward.
We could be looking backwards with self-recrimination and sadness for the choices we have made, and perhaps, for good reason.
Some of those emotions are potentially warranted, but at the end of even those caliber of mistakes, we, as an evolutionary being, must allow ourselves a point of forgiveness in which we empower ourselves to detach from all feelings of guilt, fear, disappointment, or remorse. Instead, we must be willing to allow ourselves a moment of being human, in which we are willing to forgive ourselves, and therefore accelerate forward into new territory.
Our continual ability to learn, and therefore to grow, must take the highest order of our prioritization in such moments, independent of all the pangs of remorse that we might be suffering.
There always remains value in assessing what has transpired, and rising above it, for when you lose, do not lose the lesson.
Happy Tuesday!
Brian Weiner 