ABOUT MISTAKES

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXXII, Issue 2806, 27 November 1931, Page 2 (Supplement)

ABOUT MISTAKES

TO ERR IS HUMAN: TO FORGIVE DIVINE. When does discretion become cowardice ? When is heroism rashness ? Is a man as bad as the worst thing he has ever done, or as good as the best ? These are questions for the psychologist. Many things must be considered in arriving at the proper answer, not the least of which is the circumstance surrounding the act. Yet how often do people condemn — or praise—on mere surface knowledge only ? nr There is none among us, capable ot making any sort of a decision, who does not make a wrong one now and then. There is no perfection anywhere. This fact should be remembered always before condemnation is passed on the others. Emerson says: " Each one is capable and good somewhere; incapable and weak somewhere else.” Never was there a book so wise but it contained one little untruth, one little blemish. A noted English statesman wrote recently: “ I figure that I am entitled to one major mistake a week. This is my quota. As long as I keep within it I feel all right. And frequently I run over.” . ~ Mistakes are as inevitable as tides and taxes. But because it is human to make them it isn’t excusable to make the same one twice. Mistakes cun be of value only when they teach us lessons. The danger is lest we allow mistakes to dishearten us. In the lives of all pioneers, and all leaders, of all men who leave the beaten track, there must surelv be times when they question themselves as to the wisdom of their actions. When difficulties mount one says to himself: “ Maybe I should not have attempted.” Moments of doubt are universally experienced. Even Columbus must have been assailed periodically by uncertainty when his men grumbled, and when unknown and unexplored seas rocked his frail craft the discoverer might very easily have regretted he ever thought of “that egg trick.” The story of how .he convinced a number of prominent men that there might be something in his idea of a new western route to India by asking them if they could stand an egg on end is history. They thought it impossible. Columbus cracked the end of the egg and it stood up. His graphic demonstration convinced his hearers of the value of the new viewpoint. And yet, during the stress of the voyage, Columbus may have been sorry that the idea of the egg had ever occurred to him. He may very well have wished that he had picked out a good job and stuck to it. The point is, as it always is with leaders, that he persevered and sailed on to n great discovery. The moral is not to lot our mistakes dishearten us, but rather to turn them to good account by making us better able to cope with similar situations which lie ahead.