Everyone makes mistakes. That is life’s way of teaching us lessons, and sometimes, they come in hard ways. That is why we oftentimes say, every mistake is a lesson. But how many of us see our mistakes as such? Do we stumble, fall, and decide to never get back up? Do we stumble, fall, and take note of what made us stumble so as not to make the same mistake again? The Japanese proverb says, “Fall seven times get up the eighth.” This shows that many at times, we fall more than once. We make mistakes more than once, but what matters is that we get up, dust ourselves off, and move on.
A mistake can be compared to a momentary failure in making logical and sound decisions, and we as humans, as fallible as we are, are predisposed to making illogical and unsound decisions every now and then, but what do we make of these?
In the movie Fifty Shades Freed, Christian Grey’s mother (I think she was his mother) said to him when she tried to talk him out of beating himself up for making what he considered was a mistake, she said, “Sweetheart, if there was no room for mistakes in marriage, none of them would last more than a week.” Now, let’s take that and use it in our everyday life. I’ll rephrase that sentence by saying, “If there was no room in life for mistakes, there would be no room for self-improvements.” Do you know how many of us needed to go through a particular experience to be able to enjoy the awakening, the realizations that follow that make us better people in its wake?
Mistakes are a beautiful part of life, it all depends on your perspective. It may not seem so at a closer look, during the fresh moments of the hurt that comes from it, but as time goes on, you begin to understand and appreciate its necessity, because yes, some, if not many a mistake, are a necessity.
Don’t beat yourself up for it. You cannot change it. Learn from it and move on from it. To enjoy the present, you’ve got to forgive yourself for the errors of the past. To see the future clearly, you’ve got to stop looking through the lenses of the past.
You’re allowed to brood over a period of time, but do not extend your mourn so much so that it takes absolute control of you. So much so that you’re unable to be in the present and actually enjoy it.
Looking into the past is necessary, too, why? Because it helps define our today and our tomorrow, it shapes us, it makes us better, that is if we’re willing to harness the power of the past in this way.
It isn’t the mistake that matters, it’s what happens after that mistake that does.
Exercise your free will to make mistakes - although, I would advise that you make necessary ones, I should think there are necessary mistakes ;).
