Getting Over It

The year spreads out ahead and it’s clean now.

The slate scrubbed with shame and judgement.

We need mirrors not slates.

To reflect the past

into the present

into the future.

Blank slates make lousy maps. (1)

If we were less afraid to make mistakes would we do more and learn more and understand more?  Would we benefit from what we do – for better or worse – and learn not to value ourselves and others using shaky standards of success and failure as our measure?

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. ~Mahatma Gandhi

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9 Comments

  1. Once again, Gandhi’s wisdom carries the day. Mistakes are marks of honorable learning, my calculus teacher used to tell us when leaving his class for the weekend, carrying a HUGE new assignment! Thanks for the memories. And I cannot help but love that beach picture with those 1930s/40s less-than-perfect adults having such a great time in good, clean, uninhibited sheer fun with each other. We need a lot of that in today’s world.

  2. today I sewed a hem on a pair of sweat pants with great imperfection! I’d like to have had granbee’s calculus teacher! Wise words for learning, and good to hear as a young person. When the zen master Dogen was asked by a student “what is life?”, he responded by saying,”one big mistake.” I love this! and of course Ghandi’s wise words — may they be a guide for me in 2012.

  3. Ever moving standards, seem to carry their weight by the popular opinion of un-evaluated grandeur. Grandeur then reinforced by the cycle of popular opinion. Failure, and mistake, though shameful, offers a way out. A way to bring humanity back to us.

    Strangely, our mistakes seem to likewise take on grandeur as well and become so costly, they threaten the humanity we seek to grow inside us all.

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