Boo. Boo. And again.

We all make mistakes. It is the human way. I used to work for a newspaper, in the “composing” area. We would construct ads, and mock up layouts, and that sort of thing. Sometimes we had to work really fast. On deadline.

There was a sign on our wall. It read: “Please be patient. I’m making misteaks as fast as I can.”

And so it goes. We also had to do the type-ups for Real Estate ads. One of my biggest errors came in the ad for a house. “Very nice home, 5 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2+ acres, and a large dick out front.”

Dick. Deck. I was close.

Will Rogers once said: “Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.”

Well isn’t that the god awful truth.
We’ve all done the stupid. We’ve made the big error. That terrible miscalculation. The blunders, the boo-boos, the goofs.

Most of the time, they are committed in earnest. We THINK we are doing the right thing. Then time elapses. In most cases, very little time elapses. And we notice that we are waist deep in a frozen pond, and the inner-tube…. the one we fitted with kites for wings…. has landed in the bonfire…. after knocking down two people holding hot chocolate and S’mores. Not that that has ever happened to me.

But if it ever had happened to me… I’d know not to do THAT again. As Will mentioned…. my next good judgment is based on experience…. which resulted from that bad judgment.

However, there are times in life, when that “good judgment” is a long time in waiting. Thomas Edison said he “got it wrong” more than 1000 times when he was trying to figure out the light bulb.

The important thing, I think, is that we keep learning. We keep moving forward.

I truly think the world would be a better place if we all tried a little more at this one. Growing. Learning. Knowing who we really are, and working to help ourselves.

It isn’t always easy to be the best that we can be. In fact, sometimes is downright difficult. But when we make a mistake and learn from it…. we are a little step closer.

So maybe when we start each day, we should wake up, with the intention of being our most amazing selves. And when we make those mistakes, we should remember. We are not failing. We are simply figuring things out.

 

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“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi

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“Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” 
― Salvador Dalí

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“To err is human, to forgive, divine.” 
― Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

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