Don’t Worry About Your Mistakes; They May Have Been Exactly Right

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I was leaving a package store with a bottle of shiraz for a lovely home cooked Lebanese dinner with my girlfriend, Karen, when the following situation did happen to arise:

Bottle secured in the back seat, laptop plugged into aux cable so I could listen to my Taking Back Sunday discography, it dawns on me I’m going to be even more late than I had told Karen. She knew I had left later, and understood completely; she was busy arranging her new apartment so it was of no consequence to her.  As I’m sitting in the car, however, I begin thinking, “Nice job Ethan, late again… 8:56 pm, and you’re barely on the road.”

I became so preoccupied by my tardiness, that I wasn’t paying attention to which way I should back out, which direction would get me closest to the intersection I needed to take to get to the highway the fastest. I, of course in my fit of self-degradation, backed out the wrong way and was gifted with an entirely new complement of material on which to continue my incessant psychological flagellation. As I pulled out however, I realized that there was a long slough of cars coming up from the intersection at the bottom of the hill, the intersection I took my left towards. In that moment, I realized, that if I had backed up the “correct way”, the cars would have kept me from turning out onto the road. I would have been sitting in the parking lot, versus making it onto the road and past a yellow light. I had inadvertently saved myself time and stress by making a mistake. The only stress I suffered, was entirely self-inflicted.

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I have always been a person who beats myself up for my mistakes. When a friend once asked me why I get up so early in the morning, my response was “because I feel so guilty about getting up late” and that “getting up late makes me feel like a failure; I tell myself I’m a failure if I don’t get up early.” But why would I sleep in if I wanted to get up? Obviously because I was tired and needed the sleep!

Beating yourself up for your mistakes is sometimes warranted. It’s a form of self-discipline that can be used to correct flaws you perceive in yourself. The problem is, however, that we can never perceive ourselves with complete accuracy or with any certain degree of useful insight. We all make mistakes is a phrase we know from our earliest days of childhood, but can go years without understanding, myself most certainly included. We have to come to terms with the fact that we will fail. We will miss things. We will be late for things. The only time you should ever hold yourself accountable is when you had control and chose to make the mistake consciously; you can simply promise yourself you will listen to your gut from then on and fix what needs fixing, making decisions you know to be right. But once the mistake has happened, deal with it, and look for silver linings.

I think this lesson is most important on the much bigger decisions of life. What college you went to, what friends you made, who you’ve dated, what jobs you have worked, there can be “mistakes”, things you think would have made your life better if you had decided differently. You have no way of knowing, but you assume and tell yourself that. You have no control over what life throws at you, and the lessons you learn from those experiences may serve you better than making the “right” decision ever could. Life is full of surprises, and the unexpected is the spice of life. Try to taste the idea that no matter what happens, your choices, so long as you either trust in your decision making or adjust as best you can for the mistakes that can’t be helped, have been made in a way that serves you. Look for the experience, the skills, the memories, that your choices have given you, and relish in them.

I am beginning to believe that there are no mistakes in life if we believe in our choices and accept that when our choices have lead us to the unpleasant, the unseemly, the frustrating situations, we can find a way to go on and truly make the best of it. Your mistakes may have been exactly right.

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It was 9:37 pm when I arrived in Amherst, wine in hand. As i walked through the front door, I was greeted by my ravishing girlfriend, a fully organized apartment, and a breath taking, impeccably arranged dinner for two. As it turns out, Karen actually needed the extra time to finish setting up candles, to finish cooking the kibbeh, and for setting up her living space to the immaculate standard that she prides herself in.
No mistakes were made that did not unfold exactly as they needed to. The stress of self-abuse was the mistake I needed to most account for from the evening, and it is one that will take me some time to gain mastery over.  With time, and patience, it will become just another choice that helped me move one step closer to a life without regret.  Good luck on your paths.