Mistakes will be Made...

I have been thinking a lot about the past. Everyone has a past, old and young. Some pasts are as tainted as a water supply next to an arsenic factory. Some are without much experience. Some are smooth and joyful. We all have pasts.

Visualize it: You are out in public and in walks a piece of your past, someone who is tied perhaps to mistakes you made. Maybe someone you were not very nice to (or wasn’t very nice to you). Perhaps it is someone who you are frankly embarrassed to see, because in your mind you think that the first thing they will do is walk up to you and make it all known what mistakes you made, how you were, what a jerk you were, etc. Now, you cannot tell me that at least once in your life, while out and about, you haven’t looked at the door and feared someone like that walking in. I do it, and I am positive we all do it. Maybe it is just embarrassment for our mistakes, or maybe it is fear that we will never be able to be forgiven for stupidities. We all have someone, the last person we want to see walk through that door.

Human beings seem to bear that cross of past mistakes, often unnecessarily. This brings me to one of my favorite movies, Les Miserables (spoiler alert). Think of Jean Valjean. He had a tainted past. Although he received forgiveness, and went on to become an incredible man in a position of power, he always had his head looking over his shoulder, convinced that people would find out his sins and not see him for what he actually is. The investigator, Javert, was constantly on the hunt to catch Valjean. Only when Valjean finally stops trying to run Javert, Javert leaves him alone. I believe the Javert in our life isn’t somebody else trying to hunt us, but ourselves hanging our own life and fears over our heads. Think about it, as soon as Jean Valjean finally stopped running, and faced the fact that he had made mistakes in life and agreed to surrender himself, Javert, rather than arrest Valjean,  jumps off of the bridge, realizing that his life of hunting Valjean was a failed effort, because Valjean, once a convict, proved himself a good man.

We are our own Javert. We often don’t let ourselves move on. We all make mistakes in life, and we are supposed to! From the beginning of time, man has made mistakes. All the way back to Adam and Eve. They ate the forbidden fruit. Why? To receive knowledge of good and evil. Was it a mistake? YES! God said no. That is disobedient.  Was eating the fruit a necessary step in learning? YES! I then ask the question. If an all knowing God knew that Adam and Eve were going to have to eat the fruit to move out of the Garden, then why did he put them there in the first place? Was He teaching a lesson to them that in life, you won’t be perfect and mistakes will actually be a powerful way that we learn? Adam and Eve went on to be very righteous people. Did the painful experience of being cast out of the garden motivate them to live better? Personally, I think so. I think that to a certain extent, God not only expects us to make mistakes, but wants us to so we learn from them. Mistakes have the ability to be one of the most powerful teachers that we have.

Don’t misunderstand what I am saying; you are still obligated to try your best. I can’t go out to the streets and beat someone up just to have the learning experience the mistake of assault charges carry. We must try our best. Only when we do the best to be a good person do we have the forgiveness for our mistakes. That having been said, why do we constantly beat ourselves over the head for things that we are supposed to do?  We can’t walk through life beating ourselves up, that prevents the learning. Think of life as us hiking up a mountain with buckets of paint. We are going to spill paint. It is impossible not to. Maybe you position yourself poorly, or don’t watch your step and stumble and spill some. It would be stupid if after you spill, you shake your head the rest of the way and beat yourself up for the paint you spilled miles and miles before. That seems ridiculous! As ridiculous as holding your past mistakes over your head.

People from your past will walk through that door. You will see them at the grocery store, and they frankly might not have forgiven or may even still hold your mistakes over your head. You cannot control that. They will always be there. Just realize that you are meant to make mistakes. If you learned from your mistakes, and are now a better person, then whoever it is walking through that door is at fault if they don’t see who you are rather than what you were. Your mistakes shape you. They don’t define you. What defines you are the lessons you learn from your mistakes. A favorite proverb of mine says “a just man falleth seven times, but riseth up again.” Forgive yourself, and rise up.