Mistakes

Not so long ago, someone in conversation mentioned that I had made ‘mistakes’ throughout my life.

When I got home I felt perplexed about that ‘off the cuff’ remark and started to think back on my past. And when I did, I came to this conclusion.

Mistakes are like what you do at school when the teacher hands back your homework with red biro corrections all over it. But you take away that work and you learn from it. Just as you do from any experience you may have in life.

I have perhaps made bad judgement calls, but I would never put them down to a ‘mistake’ for they have all been part of a learning curve.

I remember doing a painting ('Sole Searching')) shown above. Nothing I did felt right and in my mind it went horribly wrong. I made the ‘mistake’, or (so I thought at the time,) of painting too many thick layers all at once and using painting techniques I was unfamiliar with.

I was going to throw it onto the bonfire, when a visiting friend saw something in it that I didn’t. She told me to give it a chance.

So I did and after much patience and painting in a way I’d never worked before, that ‘mistake’ turned out to be a painting I was very pleased with and not only that, I also learnt so much more from doing so!

So you see, a mistake can only be bad if you let it. But look deeper and you will find a mistake can be one of the biggest lessons in life and it’ll be those ones where you can grow and develop in a way no other experience can and when one looks at it that way. How can things ever be a mistake?!