Are We Learning from our Mistakes?

It was one of the rainy days, I and my son, Sidhaarth were going on the car. I was in the driver’s seat and he was in the front passenger seat. As we all know, the condition of our roads during the rainy season is horrible with potholes here and there, allowing for stagnation of rain water. As I was driving, my car glided through a puddle of water and the water happened to splash upon one of the pedestrian walking by the side. I did not take much notice of it, but my son called out to my attention and said: “Dad, you just splashed the dirty water on a pedestrian”. By his voice I could understand that he was unhappy about what just happened. So, I took a defending stance by telling him, “What am I to do? The roads are like that”.  My son responded, “No dad, if you had slowed down the car where the water was stagnated, you could have avoided splashing water, on the person”. It was an invisible slap on my cheeks. I realized it was my mistake. I felt bad for being insensitive to the pedestrians. I resolved within myself, I will be more concerned about the pedestrians hereafter.

 

There are many instances in our life, when people bring to our attention, our mistakes, but most of the time, we just try to defy it, with our justification. Though later we realize that we were actually wrong. It is our ego or our sense of superiority that does not allow us to take it on the face.

 

Our natural instinct when somebody pinpoints our mistakes is to question, does that person deserve to comment on us. If we keep looking at things that way, nothing good is ever going to happen in our life. Let us say, you go to a doctor and he tells you that you have to stop smoking to save your lungs or stop drinking to save your liver and the same evening you see the same doctor, having a nice smoke and drink in a bar, you may tend to ask, “he does not practice what he preaches, then why does he advice”. But is that a wise question to ask? No!  You take his advice for his competency, as a doctor and not for his character as an individual person.

 

When any close friend of mine, pinpoint my mistakes, though at the first instance, it makes me a little upset, after a few minutes it makes me realize where I am wrong. It deepens my awareness. People, who see us from far, may think we are extraordinary, but it is those closest set of people who see us at close quarters, who can pinpoint our mistakes. It is the special right, we ourselves have endowed upon them.

 

My friend from the training fraternity, Mr. Angappan often uses this phrase in his training sessions. “Be happy, when your wife pinpoints your mistakes. Be happy when your boss finds fault with your work. Be happy when your close friends, tell you are wrong. If not for them, who else has got the right to pinpoint our mistakes. And if there is no one to make us aware of our mistakes, how do we learn and how do we grow”. I think it is a very valuable point. God has blessed us with wonderful relationships, not just to pamper us with nice pleasing words, but to give some constructive criticism which helps us change for the better.

 

I read a nice quote, “Everyone says, we learn from mistakes. But the learning happens only when we take steps to correct our mistakes.”  I think it is very true. We often admit, we are wrong, but we do not do much to correct our mistakes.

 

Let us resolve to learn from our mistakes and not repeat them.

   D. Senthil Kannan,

  Managing Trustee, PALMS, Tuticorin.

  Author of "Transformational Thoughts" - A Journey of learning 

  Email: senthilkannand@gmail.com