Mistakes Are Shards of Regret That Prod Us Into Action

To do wrong. That is the first step to doing right, and to doing well. We must do things badly first before we can expect to do them well. To be competent, to have the desire to be competent, one must brush up against the pain of being incompetent. To be good to others, one must first endure the pain of being bad to others.

Not that one should embrace this consciously. In the conscious realm, what this looks like is trying to do things and living life. But inevitably, as we live life, we make mistakes. We hurt people and create regrets. We look back with our 20/20 hindsight and see all the areas where we could have improved. It is this painful retrospection, once acknowledged, that drives us to do it better in the future.

Thus, the path to walk here is not to strive to do things badly, but rather to simply do them. Knowing that when we start we will suck gives us the ability to look back on our deeds as done, as something in the past, as a closed chapter that drives evolution of the next part of our lives. Our failed attempts got us to where we are today: they form our history, our core. They make us accountable and couch our journey in a deeper context.

Be brave. Make mistakes, then respond to them. Use them as quirky experiments to uncover the true nature of things, and let them show you how little you actually know about the world, yourself, and the people around you. Let your mistakes become embarrassing memories that make you look back and say “Man, I wouldn’t ever do it that way again.” Let them be the shards of regret that get you out of bed and into the discomfort of doing things the right way: thoroughly and with conscience.