Actually, I think I might make one every day of my life. Some of the consequences of these errors are longer lasting than others, but trust me when I say I never set out to make a mistake on purpose. I try to make the right call, do the right thing, it just so happens that at times I am wrong. And there is no way to take back words uttered or something you might have done. It’s now out there, part of your history, and all you can do at that point is either address it and try to reverse engineer to fix it, or, you may just have to live with the aftermath. Time heals, but sometimes there’s a scar that never goes away. But the good thing is that for most scars eventually you stop noticing them, when life simply moved on.
I tell J that mistakes are not necessarily bad, in fact they may not be bad at all because this is how we learn. Mess up, make a bad call in a situation, observe the results and now you know what can happen so you could avoid doing—whatever it was—again, or at least you can try.
Mistakes bring depth to our character. They add layers of wisdom like the rings of a tree. Every ring means you made it through, are still standing, and like a tree, you are taller and stronger and your canopy may provide more shade to others, shade in the sense of compassion. Think of it this way: would you rather take advice from someone you feel has had it fairly easy in life, bumps here and there, of course, but nothing major, or would you instead go to someone who has struggled, found their face in the gutter at times, but continued in spite of it all? Who would have more wisdom to offer?
But here’s the rub. We make mistakes and then we do the following: beat ourselves up for being: wrong, weak, stupid, dumb, inferior, not as good as, a loser, and the descriptions can go on all night. And this is where we cause damage to ourselves and make it worse because we slip into this emotional pit and it can be hard to climb out. The more we do it, the deeper the pit becomes, leading to, you guessed it, more poor judgment.
The other night I am in the kitchen making lunch for myself to take to work the next day. I’ve been working toward losing weight (remember, we don’t use “fat” in our house, we say “extra”), to be less extra, and here I go getting out the avocado, the tomatoes, a sprinkle of roasted almonds and goat cheese, when, suddenly I cave. At 9ish p.m., I shove a big pinch of cheddar cheese into my mouth, followed by avocado slice, followed by a quesadilla. I broke right through the barrier and now I was eating my way to the land of Deep Regret. I had been so good! One moment of weakness, I thought to myself, and I totally blew it.
Not true. Later, I thought about this weak moment another way. And a different perspective dawned on me, it was like somewhere out there wisdom descended that said I was human and being such, I make mistakes. This was simply a slip and fall in the context of my goal. No big deal. And what do we do when we slip and fall? We get back up and keep going. Find me a baby who learns to walk without falling many times first. Find me a six-year-old who rides a bike on his or her first try. Falling helps you find your balance. And balance is necessary in order to walk or ride your bike. It is part of the process and not something to berate yourself about, because you cannot learn “how” without it.
The next night I told myself that making lunch in the later evening when J is in bed—and dinner was oh, so long ago—was just not a good idea, not with the goal I have set for myself. Getting food out of the fridge at that hour has the built in possibility of diet failure. I decided instead to either make the lunch at the same time I was making dinner or do it the next morning.
And guess what? That works. I caught my balance.
—SBM (sometimes a loser, but always learning from it)
Single Busy Mommy 