I went to Lake Hancock trail yesterday and had a lovely time. It was Inna’s thought to go, she recognized that I needed a change of mental state.
I had made a huge mistake earlier that has cost Morgan her Christmas with the cats. If the cats knew what Christmas was, I would have ruined it for them also. But thankfully they think it is just a normal day at home.
There was a lot of people there by the time we got there. It was an unusual mid-day visit for us. But we managed to separate away from the groups of intruders several times and we had sections of the trail to ourselves without too much difficulty.
Like a lot of the early morning visits, yesterday was a bad day to be a fish (is there ever a good one?) and we found many of them at their final moments in this world.
On a more peaceful level, we spotted a lot of beautiful turtles and the most gorgeous butterflies, so it wasn’t all blood ‘n guts.
Anyway there are a bunch of the pics at the end of this blog so, I hope you enjoy!
The thought for today’s blog stems not from the shoot but the event that led up to it.
I made a huge mistake and threw out all the presents that Morgan had gotten for her kitties. She had been collecting them for months and had customized the presents for each of them.
She was devastated at the loss and I was heartbroken to have caused it.
Friends and family will rally around me of course, telling me we all make mistakes and that it wasn’t intentional.
But that is exactly the point of this blog. We all make mistakes.
That Alexander Pope quote “To err is human. To fogive is divine” aludes to the act of making mistakes as a normal human trait. So, why do we have such an issue with mistake making.
Many people forgive mistakes within themselves, sometimes even being oblivious to it. They imagine themselves as a great driver, never doing anything stupid, perfect husband or wife, or whatever. Yet they quickly see the faults in others.
“Where did they learn to drive?” is such a common complaint when faced with a fool that changes lanes, doesn’t indicate, or makes a last minute turn.
I have watched hundreds of games of soccer where the biggest earning players make mistakes that miss goals, cost goals, or hurt someone. Yet they are happy to chastise an official when they make a wrong call or miss something obvious.
So, my belief is that our mistakes are our own. And we should own them. Looking to excuse them or find a reason other than ourselves as to why they happened, is avoidance of the truth.
Mistakes dog our every step sometimes in life. We find ourselves unraveled by our own frailties more often than external issues.
The best learning comes from our own mistakes and this is a positive part of the mistake -making aspect of our lives.
But there is little joy in the actual mistake itself. Rarely does a mistake produce a good result by itself. We can adjust after the mistake and try something better and this sometimes takes us to where we were trying to et.
But the mistake itself is almost always a bad thing.
And avoiding them is always the best option. But how do you know what to aovid if you don’t know that you are a flawed human being.
Accepting your frailties and recognizing that you are a loser is difficult for some folks and yet self-recognition is probably the most important perspective we can have on ourselves.
Being a loser is not a comfortable place for many of us, but the reality is that for every winner in life, there are probably many losers. Finding out which one you are is a hugely important aspect of self-recognition.
If, like me, you make a lot of mistakes, then welcome to the L team. There are lots of us here.
I looked into the bottom of a barrel recently and found myself there. Me and some fishes.
It may not bewhere I want to be, but at least knowing where I am, allows me to try to find a way out.
… just a thought.
