Hi friends. It’s been a crazy morning here. I like this quote. Mistakes happen. We all make them. It’s a matter of learning from them. If you learn from your mistakes, they can be some of your greatest strengths and blessings. Mistakes can create the best next notes you have ever played.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Do you remember the days of being your parents’ remote? I do. Sigh.
I’ve been pondering a lot about the process of elimination. I have been thinking about how progress usually has a lot of mishaps along the way. It’s rarely smooth sailing.
My youngest son has epilepsy. The way you find a medication that will work for epilepsy, is purely by a process of elimination. You start with one medication, and you keep going with it, until you seize, or the side effects become unbearable. Then, you move on to the next medicine, and you start all over again. I imagine it is the same for many disorders and diseases. It’s never a simple process. It can be daunting and frustrating and disappointing.
In that light, I started thinking about how judgmental we are about ourselves on our own journeys in life, and also how judgmental we can be about others, and even about the generations who came before us. However, the reality is, most of the answers which we learn about anything in life, never become crystal clear until we test them out, right? You learn not to touch a hot stove because you experienced being burnt once or twice. You learn from your experiences, far more than you learn from any lectures. Your experiences give you an extremely visceral memory, to help to keep you on track.
I recently watched Squid Game. It’s a brutal, but fascinating watch. (SPOILER ALERT) One of the games that the contestants play is crossing a bridge, made of glass tiles which all look the same to the naked, untrained eye. Half of the tiles are reinforced glass that can hold a person’s weight, and half of the tiles are made of glass that will shatter, causing the contestant to fall to his or her untimely death. The first contestant to cross the bridge, quickly does the math. There are 18 steps to be made, in order to cross the bridge safely and intact. The first contestant has a 1/262,144 chance of crossing the bridge safely. All of the other contestants who follow the first contestant, get better and better odds, as the game goes along. The later contestants have absolutely benefited from the mistakes made by those who came before them.
Do not crucify yourself for the mistakes you make in life. Learn from them, and try to help others to not make the same mistakes that you have made. This is the main reason why we study history. History has a tendency to repeat itself, until we finally learn the lessons and take a new path. Do not be too stubborn to not learn from your own mistakes. Do not be too proud to learn from others, and their experiences. Be open to learn the lessons of those who have gone before us. At the same time, try to be compassionate when others make mistakes, realizing that people are not always “doing life”, with the same starting odds. We all make mistakes.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
There’s a scene in the movie Ingrid Goes West where two of the characters borrowed another friend’s truck and they don’t return it on time, causing him to miss an important event. On top of that, they don’t answer his frantic calls and they drive the truck while intoxicated and high and wreck it, causing significant damage to it. When they finally return the truck the next morning, dents and all, the apology given to the truck owner is so flimsy, light, and half-hearted, you would have thought they had just stepped on his toe. “Sorry, it was an accident,” was basically the flippant, flat reparation given to the stunned victim.
The movie is a comedy of sorts and you do find yourself laughing at the absurd audacity of the lack of concern on the characters’ parts, for the serious distress and upset they caused for their friend. I think why this scene seems so appallingly funny, is because most of us do the exact opposite. When we do something wrong or make a mistake, we flog ourselves endlessly for days on end, until finally we find another mistake that we have made to punish ourselves for, and we move on to punishing ourselves for the new offense.
“Dwelling on mistakes will not erase them.” – Smart Thinking, twitter
Sometimes it feels like, if we beat ourselves up enough, then that will beat the mistake into thin air, like it never happened. We all know that doesn’t work, but we certainly give it the “old college try”, don’t we?
“Your best teacher is your last mistake.” -Smart Thinking, twitter
If we change our perspective on our mistakes, we learn a lot from them. That is certainly a more fruitful thing to do than beating ourselves up into a state of despondency that is doing nothing for us or for the person or persons whom we hurt. Bottom line, we all make mistakes and errors of judgment. This is part of our being human. We need to own our transgressions, apologize soulfully from our hearts and empathize with what it must feel like for the person we hurt, in order to best deal with and move through our mistake. Next, we need to make fair amends where we can, by doing what we can do to compensate for the pain that we caused for another being. And finally, we need to forgive ourselves and let it go. Whether the other party chooses to forgive us, is up to them and on their own time schedule. We can still forgive ourselves, though. Feeling forgiveness, like happiness, is an inside job that we do for ourselves in order to live in a peaceful, emotional state.
When we learn from our mistakes, we can almost change our perspective to see the lessons that they bring to us, as astute gifts of wisdom. Sometimes the person we have hurt is ourselves, and we must take the very same steps to work through the offense of hurting ourselves, so that we can move on with a clear, peaceful conscience and the wisdom to do better in the future.
“What was your best experience?
Answer: It was your worst experience.
Why?
Because it was so convincing.” -unknown
Earlier this summer, our family had gone to a local water park for the entire day. We hired our long-time pet sitters to come to our home to take our dogs out a few times that day and to walk them. Our pet sitters are a lovely mother and daughter team who have watched our dogs when we have been away on vacation many times, sometimes even out of the country. They have always been reliable and responsible. It has always been a great comfort to us that they look after our sweet pets and even check up on our home when we are gone. Their service is truly good peace of mind for us.
Unfortunately, on this particular day, our pet sitters made a mistake and did not have us on the calendar for the right day. Later that afternoon, I realized I had not left a check out for them and I called them to let them know that I would send the check in the mail. It was then that we all figured out that a date mix-up had happened and that they had not been to the house to look after our dogs. We were all upset and they quickly got into their car and headed over to our house. The pups were good and everything ended up being just fine. Honestly, at that point I wasn’t upset about the situation any longer. Mistakes happen and all was well.
However, the best part of this story comes after that little fiasco. The part that really made me ponder my own actions in life, was how well our pet sitters handled the aftermath of their mistake. In my email, I received the most genuine apology I have received (or frankly, given) in a long time from anyone or any entity. Our pet sitters completely owned their mistake, making no excuses. This was no “Sorry But . . . ” apology. They were not defensive. This was no “Sorry That You Are Upset . . . ” apology. Our pet sitters apologized profusely for their mistake with full understanding of why this experience would have upset us, let us know the thought-out changes that they had implemented in their scheduling system to ensure that this type of mistake wouldn’t happen again in the future and asked us kindly to trust them again for future business. My family understands that mistakes happen and we had no intention of “firing” them after this one episode, but the way that the mistake was handled was a lesson to me that I won’t soon forget.
Why is it so hard to earnestly apologize? Why do we think others expect perfection from us? None of us are perfect. We all make mistakes. I think when we are wronged, all that we are looking for is true remorse from the offender, a feeling of being understood and heard as to why we are upset, and evidence that the offender has fully and earnestly considered changes to ensure that they won’t hurt us again. In that way, they are showing us that they value us and that they value our relationship to us. In my experience, these types of true apologies are rare in today’s world. True apologies are rare enough that I felt the urge to blog about them.
We have had our pet sitters come to our home and take care of our pets several times since this experience and they always provide a great service. I’m grateful to know them, not just as people who help take care of our family, but also, as teachers and way-showers, who have been good examples to me that showing humility and taking full responsibility for our actions are true markers of confidence and character. I actually have even more respect for our pet sitters now, after the mistake, than I did before. It’s been a valuable lesson for all parties involved and the dogs’ tails are still wagging.
