No Mistakes, Only Learning Opportunities

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I have been telling my students for years now that there are no mistakes, only learning opportunities. Failure shows us where to reconcentrate our efforts to increase our success and round out our skill set. For me at least, life consists of a series of opportunities to improve ourselves constantly in different aspects of character, habits, and values. Some of them remember me telling them to improve when they can and hold their ground when they get there. I believe it’s just as important for me to teach them these lessons as it is the chemistry curriculum the institution requires me to present. They are tools that will help them be successful. I do this so much that I’ve been asked why I don’t teach philosophy. I don’t have a degree in that, and in college, you teach what your degree says (thank God mine is Biochemistry). Some people never learned it in college.

While in graduate school, some gang members graffitied my house. The local sheriff’s office had made a big hullabaloo about their graffiti removal program, so I called, only to be confronted by a gruff man who seemed disinclined to acquiesce to my request. I filed a complaint with Internal Affairs. The investigating officer told me that he had enough to relieve this officer of his post and remove his pension. I told the IA officer to tell the man that he had a job still because I told them to let him keep it. He works for us, and if he’s going to be the face of the department, he needs to keep in mind that we are his customers.

Last night at the gym, the woman at the desk annoyed me greatly. She asked me to use the further racquetball court because it makes too much noise and she was trying to study for an exam. Her attitude made me feel like she felt she was more important than I, and I told her boss that you never inconvenience a customer to do something that is not related to work while you are at work. I asked him to remind her of this, with the proviso that if I ever hear or see her do it again, I will ask her to be punished.

My attitude on the subject surprised me. You can talk all you like, but when you are confronted with opportunities to see what you really believe, you find out the truth. For years, I have been saying that the first time can be a mistake, an accident, an oversight, but the second time is usually a choice. I have allowed them the chance to prove if it’s a moment of weakness because they were sad, tired, bored, having a bad day, or what have you. If I see it again, I will know it’s a pattern of behavior.

Perhaps I extend this courtesy because I have been recipient thereof. Even my current boss, for all the problems I have with her, came to me a few months back with a concern and asked me to correct it. I know that if I do it again, I will be reprimanded in writing, but if it goes away, it’s as if it never happened.

You will make mistakes. You will have moments of weakness. I have already written about allowing the atonement and hanging people for a moment, when that is not truth. Why does one moment ablate a lifetime of service while one grand act redeems a life of wickedness? You do not fall off the path suddenly. You wander off and are lost. As we learn to see things as opportunities we start seeing things for what they can be rather than just for what others around us want to make them become. You may not control what happens to you, but you can decide what you do about it from here.