Making Mistakes

Experience can be merely the repetition of same error often enough. - John G. Azzopardi

Sometimes you have to make your own mistakes. Sometimes you can learn from someone else’s, and you don’t have to make your own. Sometimes you have to make the same mistake repeatedly before you learn. Why? Because somewhere along the line, you learned something else, and before you can learn new, you have to unlearn old.

I was taught a lot of wrong things when I was a kid, including a lot of sexist and racist ideas that I’ve worked hard to eliminate from my thoughts. I’ve had a lot of unlearning to do, and I had to clear out the wrong in order to make room for the right.

Making the same mistake over and over can be a similar thing, if you learn from it. Somewhere you learned that this was the right thing, and it’ll take you a while to figure out, deep inside yourself, that no, it isn’t. But do try to learn. Too many people don’t bother to learn from their mistakes at all, much less unlearn something from their past.

With mistakes comes experience, and with experience comes knowledge and the ability to better shape your Future. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, so long as you learn.