By Henrylito D. Tacio
“Many times, what we perceive as an error or failure is actually a gift. And eventually we find that lessons learned from that discouraging experience prove to be of great worth.” ― Richelle E. Goodrich in Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year
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There was this handsome man, in his forties, who was sent by his company on a business trip to Bangkok, Thailand. In between the meetings, he had the pleasure of touring the place. It was his first trip abroad.
Two days after his arrival, he texted his wife – without checking what he had written – and sent the message immediately. When he read again what he had texted, he was horrified. This was what he had written: “This place is awesome. Wish you were her.”
If you don’t have keen eyes, you won’t see any problem with what he has written. It’s perfectly written. But to the wife, it was the worst message she had received. It simply means her husband has another girl.
It was a mistake that he will have a hard time explaining to his wife. He forgot to write the letter “e” after “her.” It should have been written this way: “Wish you were here.”
Now, this funny incident came to mind when my editor, Dr. Mary Lauren Reyes Europa, sent me a message recently. She pointed out an error I committed in the article I wrote on smoking. Instead of writing coronary heart disease for CHD, I wrote congenital heart disease.
She wondered why there was a 48% increase in congenital heart disease among men, when in fact, congenital heart disease is developed in utero. So, she verified my source and it was indeed coronary instead of congenital.
The said incident is proof that even if you are a good writer, you will still need an editor to find some faults in what you have written and to verify some facts. In most cases, editors make articles, features, and stories more vivid, easy-to-read, and concise.
Mistakes are golden
“Mistakes are a part of being human,” author Al Franken wrote in 2002’s Oh, The Things I Know. “Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way.” Hugh White considers mistakes as “lessons of wisdom.”
Every mistake has a reason. You can either accept those reasons, and learn something positive from them, or you can turn them into excuses, and thereby allow them to defeat you. The Daily Devotional explains, “Each excuse is a small defeat, and they can add up quickly. The best strategy is to avoid them. Explain yourself but make no excuses. Listen to reason but accept no excuses.”
The six mistakes of man
There are several reasons why we commit errors and blunders in life. Maybe it is due to stress, to get even, or by accident. In some instances, we make mistakes without knowing it.
For example, I saw my brother the other day chewing out my sister for rearranging the books in his room. He had everything laid out to work on his project, but she thought it was messy and she wanted to help her brother. In the middle of his tirade, he caught himself and said, “I apologize. I’m just taking my frustrations out on you, and I know you meant well.”
Cicero, the sage man, has enumerated at least six mistakes of man. These are:
(1) the delusion that personal gain is made by crushing others;
(2) the tendency to worry things that cannot be changed or corrected;
(3) insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
(4) refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
(5) neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and study; and
(6) attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.
“No matter what mistakes you may have made – no matter how you’ve messed things up – you still can make a new beginning. The person who fully realizes this suffers less from the shock and pain of failure and sooner gets off to a new beginning,” reminds American inspiration speaker and author Norman Vincent Peale.
Mistakes and challenges
Experience, they say, is the best teacher. People who reach the age of 60 or more consider themselves old and won’t work anymore. All they have to do is sit back and enjoy life. If you do that, said former Singapore Minister Lee Kuan Yew who retired at the age of 62, “You’re making the biggest mistake of your life.”
He explained, “After one month, or after two months, even if you go travelling with nothing to do, with no purpose in life, you will just degrade, you’ll go to seed.” He further said, “The human being needs a challenge, and my advice to every person: Keep yourself interested, have a challenge. If you’re not interested in the world and the world is not interested in you, the biggest punishment a man can receive is total isolation in a dungeon, black and complete withdrawal of all stimuli, that’s real torture.”
Crucial errors may come from good leaders
Learn from a good leader like him. But in some instances, it doesn’t mean that good leaders are not bound to commit errors. George Washington, on his first military campaign, made a terrible mistake. The American colonies had not yet rebelled – that was 20 years down the road. At that time, Washington was working for Britain, which was in a “cold war” with France. The two countries were tussling with each other for territory all over the world, including the area near Virginia.
One day, Washington and his troops spotted a party of French camping in their territory, and attacked them, killing ten men and capturing the rest. He shot first and asked questions later. He found out it was a diplomatic party, and one of the men he killed was an important French ambassador.
Washington had made a big mistake. The two major military powers of that time ended their cold war and entered a hot war.
“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes,” wrote Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray. – ###
