I deem it a success that today is ‘Making Mistakes’ #4!

The Wrong Mistake

Yogi Berra, the famous baseball player and manager has a great quote.  While explaining why his team didn’t win he said, “We made too many wrong mistakes.”  I turned that around to come up with my quote today. Yes, you need mistakes in life to grow and learn, but they have to be the right mistakes, not the wrong ones.  How can you tell the difference?  It’s not easy, but it has something to do with risk, as fuzzy as that sounds.

Over a Cliff

 When I lived in San Jose, California, there was a big news story in 1983 about Dennis Barnhart, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who worked for years and years to make his company, Eagle PC, a success.  He finally did it and took the company public.  As a result he was an instant multimillionaire and decided to reward himself by buying a Ferrari.  He then took the Ferrari for a spin along the curvy mountain roads above the valley.  He was alive and free and had made it!  He then made a mistake and went over a cliff to his death.  He made a wrong mistake.

Into the Wild

The book  ‘Into the Wild‘ tells the story of a young man, Chris McCandless, who wants to truly live out in the wild, on the edge. No fall back, no plan B.  And he does.  He goes off to Alaska and proceeds to live just like that.  He is successful until he misidentifies a certain plant as being ok to eat that actually wasn’t.  As a result he died alone in the Alaska Wilderness, his body found 2 weeks later by some hunters passing through.  He made a wrong mistake.

The Bad Divorce

I remember talking to a friend about my divorce once.  I told him that my unwife and I are now at peace with each other and what happened. That we are thoughtful, kind, forgiving, supportive and helpful towards each other as often as circumstances allow.   He responded that he had wished his mother had been able to do that after his parents divorced. She had not, but instead had held on tightly to every anger, every slight, every fault and every failing of her ex-husband.  She had spent well over 30 years since the divorce focused again and again on her anger and hatred of him and his mistakes.  She had not let go and not moved on.  She made a wrong mistake.

The Wrongest Mistake

What do those three examples have in common?  In all three, people died. ‘Wait a minute,  no one died in the third story!’ you say?  But what would you call being held and tortured as prisoner of a mistake (yours or someone else’s), in a prison of your own devising, for the rest of your natural life?  

To compound a mistake by condemning yourself forever has to be the wrongest of mistakes if you ask me.  So, while it is important to avoid wrong mistakes that might kill you, it is even more important to avoid the wrongest of mistakes, the mistake of condemning yourself to death while still alive.  Don’t make that mistake.

_________________

Quote, drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman

_________________