Everyone make mistakes

If you view making a mistake as an embarrassment or a blemish on your character, then it’s understandable why you may want to avoid them.

But isn’t this a fairly narrow perspective?

Can mistakes not also be opportunities to learn and grow? Does realizing you have the wrong answer not bring you one step closer to the right answer?

If truth and progress are the ultimate goal, then are mistakes not important steps towards achieving it?

Lastly, we all make mistakes, so what reason is there to feel alienated when we make them?

As Alexander Pope beautifully put it in his poem An Essay on Criticism, “to err is human.”

Viewing mistakes as daunting things that must be avoided at all costs is exhausting. I think our existence can be made much more pleasant and fruitful when we learn to recognize them as perfectly normal, acceptable parts of our life.