It always surprises me when people are shocked that dogs die, or that we can’t be happy all of the time, or that money doesn’t guarantee security happiness, or that it is a good thing to never make mistakes.
I make mistakes all the time, every day perhaps, and I am not surprised.
No one who knows me, especially me, would imagine I can go very long without making a mistake. I used to feel embarrassed, even ashamed when I made a mistake, which was much of the time.
I was not happy about myself.
I know I can’t be happy if I expect to live all the time at the highest peak of accomplishment, love or…well, happiness. Happiness is not a matter of intensity or even joy, for me, happiness is a matter of balance and order and harmony and pace. Life between mistakes, in one sense.
Since I do not expect to be happy all the time, it means a great deal to me when I am. And I accept the times I am not happy, I think of them as my being like a big boat idling its engines in the water before leaving the harbor to catch more fish.
So do my mistakes accept themselves.
I am proud of them sometimes, I don’t hide from them or feel shamed by them any longer. Life is not a question for me of getting something I want. Life itself is imperfect. All living things begin to die the second they begin to live, and there is no reason to think any of us can be absolutely perfect or behave perfectly.
Mistakes are a part of my life, a critically important part. Mistakes have shaped me and educated me more than any other thing. When I make a mistake, it sometimes frightens me, but it also thrills me with another opportunity to learn and change. What could be worse for our spiritual and literal development than to never make a mistake?
I know people who think they never make mistakes, and I don’t like them much. My friends tend to be people like me, we make mistakes all of the time and learn from each one.
I know people who are angry with me for the mistakes I make, but they are not my friends, and I don’t look to them for wisdom or guidance. I like my mistakes so much I often repeat them, again and again.
It is by making mistakes, wrote Thomas Merton, that we gain experience and wisdom, not only for ourselves but for others as well. I don’t want a perfect life, and I’m never sure why so many people expect that for themselves.
Life is hard, it is not a simple, relentlessly happy thing. We make mistakes all of the time. Life is good, we make mistakes all of the time.
That is an awesome photo Jon…”The road That Leads to Where?” I think this one would sells rather easily…beautiful and makes one think.
Thanks Sally, it’s up for sale, but nobody has bought it..at least not yet..
Honest and well said.
Buddha said much the same concept.
Well, that’s good company…
Jon, I wish I could print this out and tape it to my kitchen wall. Much wisdom here! When I was young, I thought I’d stop making mistakes as I grew older and smarter. That didn’t happen. I have yet to cross that bridge where I don’t feel embarrassed and ashamed of my mistakes. You give me hope that some day I will. There is so much truth in what you said about happiness being a matter of balance and harmony … life between mistakes. I guess for me, happiness is more of a state of simply feeling content. Thank you for this post!
I am going to use this often: “I like my mistakes so much I often repeat them, again and again.” Don’t we all. The best teachers, they are. And it made me laugh. Thanks Jon.
Amanda
When I was 23, utterly inexperienced in most all aspects of life, stumbling from one “mistake” to the next, but joyfully free from the constraints of living at home with my parents, I found my first dog, a Samoyd/lab mix puppy – and she was “mine all mine”! But by the time she was about 8 months old, I thought she was “brain damaged”, she would not follow (what I discovered later) my too-loud, inappropriate, ill-timed “commands”. I took her to the only place I knew of that had “dog supplies” on their sign in front of the store. The owner kindly took her for a walk around outside and returning her to me he said the words that changed everything, “There’s nothing wrong with this dog. It’s YOU. Take her to dog training classes.” And I did, and that wonderful dog trainer also said the next words that changed my life, “Your dog cannot learn new words, new behaviors, until she makes a ‘mistake’ – and in that moment you provide correction, you show her what you meant when you said, “Sit”. Pause and gently push her behind down. Then PRAISE her and repeat. Your dog needs “miss the mark” while learning, and you too for that matter, he said! This hit me like a bright light that evening, nearly 40 years ago, in a school gymnasium where I took my so-NOT-brain-damaged dog for puppy training classes. Before that night, I’d been raised to believe I needed to be “perfect”, or at least hide all my imperfections. I was taught to be ashamed when I stumbled, when I said or did or wrote down the “wrong” thing. What a moment of future joy and freedom it was to hear this new idea: to deeply and personally incorporate the meaning of new words, new insights, new ways of moving joyfully through the good and sorrows of life, my mistakes were “tools” I could use, not “sins”. Ah ha!
Good dog! Good girl! Good boy!