Mistakes… and Lessons Learned

It would surely be an understatement to say that all of us make mistakes⎯mistakes sometimes followed by real regrets⎯regrets for things we wish we had said or done, or wish we had not said or done.

And since we make mistakes, we may find ourselves carrying on a conversation with our conscience, sometimes justifying, sometimes rationalizing, sometimes trying to talk down the uneasy inner accusations, or sometimes going to the other unfortunate extreme of assuming that there is nothing we can do about what we have done or have failed to do, and resigning ourselves to the mistakes we may have made.

But neither self-justification nor resigned hopelessness is wholesome. The only acceptable way lies between these two: facing up to the facts and doing something about them; improving, repenting.

It seems a significant thing that the Lord God gave us the principle of repentance. He surely must have known that we would need it. And he surely would not have given us the principle if he had not been willing to accept our sincere repentance. This, in itself, seems significantly hopeful.

Within the limits of this imperfect life, there will likely always be some regrets. And no matter what decisions we make we often wonder what would have happened if we had done differently. But we cannot go back. And it is worse than wasteful to waste life away on idle regrets, regrets from which we do not learn, regrets that do nothing for us for the future. From any mistake we should learn a lesson. If not, there is no peace, no progress.

“Let not sleep fall upon thy eyes,” said Pythagoras, “till thou hast thrice reviewed the transactions of the past day. Where have I turned aside from rectitude? What have I been doing? What have I left undone, which I ought to have done?” “There is no greater delight,” said Mencius, “than to be conscious of sincerity on self-examination.” All of us would well do such sincere self-searching, and from any mistakes see that there is a lesson learned, so that regrets may not be hopeless, useless; so that there may be peace, repentance, and progress for the future.