Sunday, September 20, 2009

Making Mistakes


Mistakes provide you with the opportunity to take a step back. 
It puts a halt to your skip, and should you choose to, 
makes you assess where you are at that very moment and where you intend to go from there. 
Sometimes, 
  • we keep right on the path we have set for ourselves 
  • we stop for a moment longer and take that moment in just a little more 
  • we turn right around and try to find from where we came 
  • we find ourselves moving forward in a different direction, one we may never knew existed before our pause  

Yet, many of us fear making mistakes. 
What we really fear are the repercussions we may have to face for having made the mistake(s).  

Growing up, I was always hastily and heavily reprimanded for my "mistakes." 
I put this word in quotation marks because I was never always aware what the mistake had been. 
Nor was I necessarily made aware. 
And leave a child, punished, alone to decide what was wrong...  
that child ultimately decides the mistake lies within. 
That the child, ultimately, is the mistake - that I could do no right, 
and if I did I called it "luck." 
Nevermind that I was not aware of the crime for which I was being punished, 
I was not even educated about the circumstances at play. 
All I came to learn was that I made a mistake and that I was wrong. 
After awhile, making mistakes was unacceptable.  
To make a mistake means having to face that something was wrong about myself.  

The irony is - I can accept others making mistakes; 
I do not think there is necessarily anything wrong with them. 
I mean is it not human to err...?  

Now, I make mistakes, and I look forward to learning my mistake and evaluating how to respond to it.  

For it is not about making the mistake, but about how I choose to respond to it.

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