They Always Shoot The Messenger...

It always stinks being the bearer of bad news. Somebody has to do it...I just wish I could get some slack when it has to be me.

No one likes to be told they are wrong or that a mistake was made. Me included. And where I am concerned, no one has ever been as hard on me as I am on myself because I don't ever want to let anyone down. But sometimes it happens; if possible corrections need to be made, we all learn, and we move on. I truly don't look at these incidents as mistakes as much as experiences to learn. Most of the time...

Unfortunately, we live in a world where no one makes mistakes, or at least, admits to them. It's always someone else's fault, or outside circumstances caused the incident, or there is more to it than my small brain can understand. Believe me, I can grasp a lot more than you would believe. Sadly, making mistakes in this world seems to be an incredible liability no one wants to assume.

Today's society needs to remember: some of the greatest things have come from mistakes. For example, the potato chip! This was a mistake in the kitchen that led to the greatest invention since someone thought it would be great to smash up a cocoa bean and name it Hershey. Penicillin was stumbled upon when someone forgot to wash the dishes and found this mold could kill the bacteria growing around it. (Okay, that's really Eeeewww....wash your dishes.)

We need to stop berating one another for our mistakes. Also, when our mistake is pointed out, we need to stop taking it as a character flaw. It's not. Some people do things better than us; some things we do better than others.

Eliot Spitzer made a mistake. Now he's got a show on CNN. He admitted his mistake and he is moving on (although that one was really a doozy.) I think it is in the creation of excuses that the mistake becomes intolerable to those suffering for it. A little humility helps the mistake move past "Yikes!" to "I learned something today."

When we begin treating others mistakes as gently as we treat our own, we'll be getting somewhere. I don't disdain a mistake or the one who made it; nor do I consider it a flaw in their character. So if I mention it to you, don't shoot me. I'm not judging you as I hope you're not judging me when it's inevitably my turn.