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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Related articles
- it’s a whole new year (thesethingschange.wordpress.com)
- On the rise: Who could break out in 2012? (boston.com)
- Mahatma Gandhi and the Experimental Approach to Life (seymourjacklin.co.uk)
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.
Thanks for that comment – it’s really on the button. I love that picture as well. For exactly the same reasons!
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.
Well done!
Mistakes can be a great teacher.
However possibly not as warm hearted as the teachers we’ve been talking about.
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.
What a great analysis – I never thought of it as grandeur before – thanks.
our freedom, so hard won, is again being whittled away by a government who wish to control everything centrally
*sigh*