On Mistakes: Quoting, Apologising and Correcting

"A good man apologizes for the mistakes of the past, but a great man corrects them." 

(Attributed to Goethe, on TV Show Forever)

When I heard this quote in the storyline of the TV show Forever it hit a note. It was exactly what I tried to explain this week to a colleague. A mistake was made and my colleague, in his honesty and integrity, immediately wanted to admit to it and apologise to those affected. I stopped him. 

I always consider the first thing anyone should do, in this situation, is apologise. However it doesn't always help those let down. So on this occasion I said to wait to see if we could fix it. I said it all kinds of ways that didn't quite express what I meant, but when I heard the above quote, I realised it was what I was trying to say. We can apologise to people, for all kinds of reasons, for being late, for forgetting things, for doing wrong but we should also try to avoid making the same mistake again. To learn from it and to make reparation to those who have suffered because of the mistake. That is really being sorry for what you have done. So sorry you don't want to do it again and you want to fix it.

Although I was enamoured by the Forever/Goethe quote, I realised that I ran the risk of making a mistake if I didn't check out its origin. So I did some research and found no reliable source of evidence that Goethe actually said these words*. So, rather than continue with the mistake, I am going to correct it here and create from the Forever 'quote',  a new mantra for myself, (leaving out the labelling of the person as 'man' or 'good' to instead focus on the behaviour) and try to live and learn by it.

My mantra is:

It's good to apologise for a mistake but it's better to fix it.

(R.A. Lynch, Youth & Community Worker & Writer, 2015)

* And if I'm mistaken about the Goethe quote being wrong, I will apologise and fix it.

More on Mistakes...

• Morals & Ethics: How to Live Well
• New Year Traditions: What to Wear, Eat & Do
• Stephen Hawking, The Theory of Everything & My Dislocated Thumb
• 10 Reasons We Should Make Mistakes
• TED Talks on the Importance on Failure and Mistakes

TED Talks on the Importance of Failure and Mistakes

Learning about the value of mistakes, I stayed up until early morning (2.37am. as I write) watching TED Talks. This in itself is a mistake in some ways, considering how tired I will be tomorrow but what I have learned will have such a positive outcome, hopefully it will outweigh any negative consequences. This is a somewhat subjective measurement of the situation which may be more about justification than an accurate account of my actions.

I watched and listened and waited for new ideas and inspiration, reinforcement  of learning and reassurement and on top of that some new challenge and knowledge and understanding. I wanted and got it all.

Now I will not compound my mistake by staying up later to finish this piece. That constant battle with myself (or my monkey according to some therapist I saw on TV). This balancing act I perform. This constant struggle to do the right thing. The neat mind-ledger of life with + & - and the balance where I don't owe or am indebted to anyone or feel like I forgot something or got it wrong. Where everything is a tidy column of nicely written balanced figures and letters, expressing the equally measured karma to come my way. Rather than the crumpled up, illegiblly written post it note, lost in the tower of post it notes with more illegible lists which I will never get round to not least because I can't read my own writing.

It's 3 am. I press Save, thinking how these posts are trying to be some interpretation and re-organization of the metaphorical tower of crumpled illegible post it notes. These blog posts are the nearest I will come to the organizational and analytical equivalent of a spreadsheet.

Ted Talks about the value, joy and necessity of making mistakes:

The writer of Eat , Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert gives an inspiring talk on finding your way home from the disorientation of the being thrown off balance by either success or failure: Success, Failure and the Drive to Keep Creating 

Kathryn Schulz, a writer from the New Yorker says Don't Regret Regret and tells us to embrace our wrongness in On Being Wrong.

Tim Harford, the Undercover Economist stills about the value of trial and error for success and, he asks us to make better mistakes in Trial and Error and the God Complex.

Diana Laufenberg, a school teacher,  in How to Learn? From Mistakes, talks about the idea of that school isn't today necessarily where people get their information and how the projects she has worked on with students havce found more to learn from in the mistakes than in the perfectly executed, using the formula 'fail, procees, learn from'. She is an advocate of 'experiential learning and empowering student voice and embracing failure' which does not come about with standardised tests or a 'culture of one right answer'.

10 Reasons We Should Make Mistakes

"Make glorious, amazing mistakes" was Neil Gaiman's advice in his New Year Wish, "because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something."

 

Many amazing inventions (and possibly inventors) have been born of mistakes, from penicillin to Xrays. We think of mistakes as things that are problems and cause injury and death. We think of things aa mundane as spelling mistakes, as worring as forgetting to turn the gas off to tragedies like the sinking of the Titanic.

We don't think of mistakes as learning tools, as ways of experimentation, as ways to find out what works from what doesn't work. It's not call 'trial and error' for nothing!

Quite a few people, according to Quote Investigator have thought similarly about mistakes over the last 150 years:

1. He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery. (Samuel Smiles, 1859)
2. The man who never makes enny blunders seldum makes enny good hits. (Josh Billings, 1874)
3. A man who never makes a mistake will never make anything. ( Mr. Phelps, 1889)
4. It’s only those who do nothing that make no mistakes. (Joseph Conrad, 1896)
5. The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything. (Theodore Roosevelt, 1900)
6. The man who does things makes many mistakes, but he never makes the biggest mistake of all—doing nothing. (Poor Richard Junior’s Philosophy, 1903)
7. Every man makes mistakes; they say a man who never makes mistakes never makes anything else. (G.K. Chesterton, 1927)
8. The man who never makes a mistake must get tired of doing nothing. (Will Rogers, 1993)
9. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. (Albert Einstein, 1995)

10. In 1891 Oscar Wilde wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray:

“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.” 

As Gandhi said:

“Freedom is not worth having 

if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”

(Cited in Inspirational Quotes and Thoughts, 2013 by G. Beri)

Stephen Hawking, The Theory of Everything and My Dislocated Thumb

Watching, The Theory of Everything I was reminded of when I saw Stephen Hawking in the Science Museum in London and why I had to explain to the customs officer in JFK airport in New York, why I had dislocated my thumb. The officer had already asked if I had ever lived in Washington, as someone with my name who had done 'some bad things' lived there and after the retina scan and fingerprints of one hand he was suspicious of the hand in the sling. As I gingerly placed my fingers in the scanner one by one and then my thumb, he asked my how it had happened. 

Stephen Hawking, 18th of August 2014, Science Museum, London

The story made perfect sense to everyone else who I had told, although they knew me and thus it would make sense. However the officer was not impressed. So I started by saying how I was a youth worker (which needed translation) and was at the Science Museum in London with a group of ten to thirteen year olds waiting for them with all their gear at the meeting point, in the Launch Pad when I heard a voice simulator. I turned around to see which machine made the Stephen-Hawking-like-sound and saw it was Stephen Hawking. I, grabbed all the gear, in excitement and rushed to find the young people to tell them. 

All seemed to go well from here. I found one girl and checked she knew who Stephen Hawking was

and when she said she did, told her that he was just around the corner. She didn't believe me. There was much 'Yes he is' and 'No he isn't' going on before she only believed me when she saw him with her own eyes. Rounding up the rest there was great interest and excitement and we talked to some of the staff who told us that they didn't even know he was coming until that morning because they couldn't be trusted to keep it secret. He was there with his grandchildren, which was a surprise, as we hadn't even known he had grand-kids but were delighted to share the time in the museum with such a major figure of science who was simply spending time with his grandchildren. The staff member admitted feeling nervous when she was explaining the activities in case he told her she was wrong.

We couldn't believe the first time we took a group of young people to the Science Museum that  Stephen Hawking was there with his grandchildren! It certainly made it memorable. That and my dislocated thumb!

Now you wonder what is the connection between my dislocated thumb and Stephen Hawking? Well I was at the museum on Monday the 18th of August, and at the doctor on Wednesday the 20th getting the pain in my thumb checked out as I was flying to New York on Thursday the 21st. The doctor asked if I'd fallen or knocked it or done anything that would cause it to dislocate. I said no, nothing had happened but I said that I was hypermobile so that could have been it. All I wanted to know was if I should rest it or use it. I was told to keep it immobile in a sling.

This was how I ended up at JFK explaining to the customs officer why it was that I was wearing a sling and why it was related to Stephen Hawking. It had been a long flight. A flight which gave me time to mull over the recent events. Time for me to replay the incident in the Science Museum and see the exact moment I dislocated my thumb. 

There I was, I heard the synthesised voice. I turned around. I was so shocked when I realised it was actually Stephen Hawking that I just grabbed all the bags and coats and rushed to get the young people. That's when it happened. I remembered the pain. Then remembered quickly ignoring the pain and readjusting my hand to rush with excitement to share the experience with the young people. It was Stephen Hawking!

I recounted the story to the customs officer, as I have here and to other people. It does help if you know who Stephen Hawking is. The ten to thirteen year olds did. He didn't. And that was the end of that.

New Year Traditions: What to Wear, Eat and Do

New York Graffiti on Rock on the Shore of the Hudson, 2014

What makes a good year? Can anything we do influence the year to come, apart from what we actually do in that year? I've heard about everything from the colour of your underwear deciding your future success to what you eat, whether its 12 grapes, lentils or hitting a loaf of bread against the walls or what old furniture you throw out your window.

There is an abundance of traditions around the world which focus on what you wear, eat and do and are all about trying to prevent or ward off the negative and promote and welcome the positive. Not a bad idea, how it's executed isn't always easy to understand but there is nothing wrong with a new start.

What can we do?

Wear the right clothes (more specifically – the correct colour underwear):

1. S. America – Red for Love, Gold for prosperity ***/++
2. Columbia – Yellow for Happiness and peace***
3. Puerto Rico – White for fertility and health***

Eat (or don't eat) the right food:

1. China: Eat long noodles for longevity/long-life*
2. Greece/Philippines: Eat round food like donuts in Greece and 13 round fruit for luck in Philippines ++/*
3. Turkey: Eat Pomegranate for health and prosperity as it looks like a heart*
4. Italy/Chile: Eat lentils as symbols of abundance and coins*/***
5. Spain, South America & Mexico: Eat 12 grapes with a wish for each month of the year **
6. Germany, Poland & Scandinavia: Eat herring as its an abundant fish and look like silver*
7. Southern USA: Eat Black Eye Peas as look like pennies and corn bread which looks like gold*/++
8. Russia: Write your wishes for the new year, burn them and put ashes in the champagne you drink at midnight. **/+
9. Scotland: Have the person who takes the 'first foot' inside your door bring you luck with such items as coal, bread, a coin and good wishes. **/++
10. Ireland: Bang bread against the walls and doors of the house to ward off evil (and check the bread is baked) ***/+/++ 
11. Any where with green cash – eat greens for obvious reasons*/++

Do the right thing (or something):

1. S. Africa: Throw your old furniture our a window. ***
2. Columbia/Ecuador: If you want to travel - run round your house with suitcases **/++
3. Denmark: Jump off a chair for good luck **
4. Philippines: Jump up if you are a child and want to grow taller ++
5. Germany: Rub ash on your forehead for good luck **
6. Scotland: Swing fireballs in the air +++
7. Russia: New Year's Tree and fireworks celebrate the arrival of Ded Moroz and granddaughter who bring presents for children on New Years Day ***
8. Ecuador: Burn a scarecrow to get rid of the negativity of the previous year ***
9. Iran: Bang pots and pans at midnight in the street ++
10. Japan: Watch the sunrise from atop a mountain to welcome the light of the new year +++
11. Bahamas: New Year Day parade to welcome the New Year

The last three traditions I mention, I am most familiar with: 

• Anywhere that uses fireworks and crackers, this is to to ward off/scare the negative and darkness and light the future ++
• US, UK and other areas: Kiss the person at midnight who you want to share the good fortune of the year with. ** 
• Writing New Year's resolutions (see below).

Rank	Top 10 New Years resolutions for 2014
1	Lose Weight
2	Getting Organized
3	Spend Less, Save More
4	Enjoy Life to the Fullest
5	Staying Fit and Healthy
6	Learn Something Exciting
7	Quit Smoking
8	Help Others in Their Dreams
9	Fall in Love
10	Spend More Time with Family

           Source: University of Scranton. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2014

Whatever way you chose to celebrate the new year, whenever your new year is, there is nothing wrong with new beginnings, change, new things...and doing things that seem strange or making resolutions you never keep. Its doing something.

As Neil Gaiman wrote as his New Year Wish, in his blog in 2012:

'I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something. So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever'

I am looking forward, as Gaiman (2012) advocates, to making more mistakes this year and 'making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing [myself], changing [myself], changing [my] world'.

 

More New Year Traditions Round the World

Sources of New Year Traditions:

*     Woman's Day, 10 Good Luck foods for the New Year

**    Eyewitness News, New Year Eve Traditions Around the World Said to Bring You Good Luck

***   Boston.com, 10 Quirky New Year's Eve Traditions Around the World

+     International Business Times, New Year's Eve Traditions Around the World 2015

++   Houston Chronicle, 19 Strange New Year's Traditions

+++ The Guardian, Alternative New Year's Eve Festivals Around the World

Morals and Ethics: How to Live Well

'What is a Good Life?' 

...asks Donald Dworkin in the New York Review of Books (Issue February 10, 2011)

I wonder what I am striving for, what I am hoping to achieve in my life or with my life. I have done wrong and made mistakes and know the difference - consciousness. I have no problem admitting to making mistakes and realise with experience how much I have learned from them and how little I need to feel responsible for them as long I do learn.  Doing wrong on the other hand, can have learning but a conscious decision to do wrong is very different. That is where the guilt comes.

What is guilt? Is it derived from my Catholic schooling, my parents influence, my peers or is it 'cognitive dissonance' (Festinger, 1957)? What do I do about it? I either change my belief that I am wrong or about what is wrong so I won't feel guilty. Or I find out information that might exonerate me or provide circumstances in which I might not be wrong. Or I demote the importance of the action of the wrong doing. Or I do the right thing so that my actions are in line with my beliefs. Dworkin (2011) suggests:

 '...it is unlikely that we will ever achieve a full integration of our moral, political, 
and ethical values that feels authentic and right. 
That is why living responsibly is a continuing project and never a completed task. 
But the wider the network of ideas we can explore, 
the further we can push that project.'

Is avoiding guilt or cognitive dissonance a good enough reason to do the right thing? Stosny (2008) advocates using the use of our sense of  'responsibilty' rather than guilt to fuel our actions, because it comes from 'basic compassion, with its inherent motivation to improve, appreciate, connect, or protect'. Dworkin (2011) considers ' we have a responsibility to live well and believe that living well means creating a life that is not simply pleasurable but good in that critical way.'

The consciousness I mentioned earlier which indicates the difference in my mind between making mistakes and 'doing wrong' comes across in Dworkin's (2011) explanation of why we should 'live well' (my emphasis):

We are charged to live well 
by the bare fact of our existence as self-conscious creatures with lives to lead.
 We are charged in the way we are charged by the value of anything entrusted to our care.
It is important that we live well; 
not important just to us or to anyone else, 
but just important.

Much in the same way that Smith (1982) mentioned the importance of 'process' over 'product', Dworkin (2011) considers:

The final value of our lives is adverbial, not adjectival -
a matter of how we actually lived, 
not of a label applied to the final result.

So if I want to know, the 'meaning of life', perhaps I need look no further than Dworkin (2011) when he says:

'We can think of living well as giving meaning - ethical meaning, 
if we want a name - to a life.'

Dworkin, R. (2011) What is a Good Life? The New York Review of Books, Issue February 10
Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Smith, M. (1980, 1982) Creators not Consumers, NAYC Publications /Youth Clubs UK, Second Edition
Stosny, S. (2008) Guilt vs. Responsibility is Powerlessness vs. Power, Understanding emotional pollution and power, Issue May in Anger in the Age of Entitlement, Pschyology Today