“As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna
be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.” ~ Mel Brooks
I’ve always been very happy to admit to my mistakes. I’ve
been known to admit my mistakes, even when I’m right. I’ve found it’s often
easier to admit to a mistake I didn’t make than to try to explain to the hypothetically
unmistaken person that it wasn’t my fault. Hell, I was expelled from high
school a month before graduation based on somebody else’s mistake. That, and
lack of due process. It’s a wonder I’m not bitter.
My professional career as a bureaucrat at Research-O-Rama
University was based on accepting blame for mistakes made by people who
outranked me but who were dumber than a nutless nougat bar when it came to
using their words, their heads, or their mad CPA/MBA skilz. I generally used
my bureaucratic superpowers only for good. Besides, I could run rhetorical
circles around them and confuse them with big words like mesmerize, treacle,
and ipso factoid.
Even so, it was usually easier to apologize and get back to work than to cite a reference in a
volume of the Policy and Procedure Manual (at last count about a dozen large
light-blue loose leaf binders) and say “These are not the mistakes you are
looking for.”
But humility is my greatest character trait - at the top of
a long list of great character traits, granted. As an example of humbly
admitting I am fallible, here’s a mistake I made once. I bought a pencil with
an eraser on it.
As for actually making mistakes, I’m of two minds:
One mind says with age should come wisdom and my quest
should be to attain perfection, aka, don’t make no more mistakes. Or at least maybe
make fewer mistakes. As Nick once said to Nancy, if the world wasn’t spinning,
the people in China would fall off. So accept that we’re all going to be a
little dizzy; but try to hang on, you know?
The other mind says go fuck yourself.
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