I believe in making mistakes.
I know that in the overall scheme of life mistakes are meant to be bad. They lead us to failure and who wants to fail?
But that’s not entirely true, similar to yesterday’s point, the importance of learning firsthand also applies to making mistakes.
Let’s say you didn’t want to learn firsthand, how could you avoid making mistakes? Well, by listening to other people of course! With that approach, you’re making two fundamental assumptions:
One. What they consider to be a mistake in their environment and circumstances is also going to be a mistake in yours.
Two. Repeating the actions that led them to their mistake will result in your facing the same mistake.
I believe that both of these have cases where they become incorrect assumptions.
Let’s take the first case. Decisions and choices are extremely environment-based. Divorcing an abusive partner may be considered a huge mistake in some societies and the correct path in others. Same goes for abortion and many other controversial issues. Dropping out of school to help save your family’s financial situation might seem shortsighted to some people but might lead you to go through doors that would not have been available to you in some societies because in yours family values are extremely highly regarded. What I consider to be a stupid move might be an act of genius for you.
On a related note, just because you do the same thing I did doesn’t mean you will reach the same results I did. We could both cut school and go to the movies and while I get caught and end up getting detention, you might end up meeting someone who changes your life in that movie theater. (okay, it’s not likely but it could happen) A lot of our life depends on people or events outside our control. The likeliness of a certain set of actions resulting in the same exact outcome is very low.
Even if we ignored the above points. I still think there’s much to be said for making your own mistakes and learning from them. When you make a mistake, depending on the significance of that mistake, it stays in your mind for quite a long period of time. You don’t need someone to explain to you why it’s a bad idea, you lived through it and you learned. Even when the same actions result in a mistake, there might be different reasons why it was a mistake for you than why it was a mistake for the other person. And it’s important to know the difference.
When we make mistakes, we learn about ourselves more than anything else. Yes, we learn about our environment, too, but we learn so much more about our logic. Our assumptions. Our ignorance. Our unrealistic expectations. Our naive outlook. We try to sit and pinpoint where exactly things went wrong. At what point did the great idea turn into a disaster?
That’s not something any other human being can teach you.
Previously? Show Me.
Cut n paste from my site because I’m lazy:
You have some excellent thoughts about mistakes. I agree that the idea of a mistake is certainly subjective. The same actions taken by two different people will likely not have the same outcome. The actions themselves are not the mistakes. It is the actions in context of the rest of the individual’s life that makes all the different.
As far as humans look at it, it is often the consequence (either positive or negative) of an action that determines if someone made a mistake. People seem to generally believe that you have made a mistake if the result of an action is a negative. As you note, this belief is not always true. A consquence could be negative in the short term, but highly positive in the long term for any number of reasons (the easiest to see is the knowledge an individual gains after seeing the results of a mistake). Also, a negative consequence is only negative in context. Two people may look at the same consequence and one will determine that it is positive and the other negative because they interpret the context differently.
Finally, a question: is a mistake a mistake if you learn from the outcome?
to answer your question: i would say, no. it’s very difficult to figure out what’s a mistake and what’s not. i guess, in the end, it comes down to the individual’s judgement. if you think you failed, it’s cause your expectations didn’t meet the results. but if you learned something along the way, it most likely was worth the trip. life is often about the journey and not the destination anyhow. 🙂