Wrong

 

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Dare to be wrong.

There.  I said it.  Dare to be wrong, sometimes.  Dare to admit you were wrong.  Choose to accept that you were wrong.  

And then choose to make it right.

One of my mentors always greeted me with the question - what mistake have you made lately?  

She taught me to embrace my mistakes.  My 'wrong-ness'.  She showed me that being wrong is not terminal, it's just another stop along the road of learning.  Of becoming more fully human.  Of how to accept that not everyone is right, all the time, and from being 'wrong' we can learn to become more 'right'.

Somehow we have evolved into a society where no one dares to accept they were wrong about anything.  The more they refuse to accept their wrong-ness, the less able they are to change and grow.

I had to confront a young person once who did me a 'wrong'.  Somehow she had never learned in her 19 years to date, to accept responsibility for when she did something wrong and work to make it right.

I was just upset enough, angry enough, I quietly and calmly (in public so I wouldn't shout) pointed out all the ways she had been 'wrong' in the previous few weeks.  Pointed out her absence of sense and how her bad choices had caused actual harm to me.  And I kept pushing until she started to cry.

Ah-ha, I thought.  She's learned over the years that if she starts to cry, everyone lets her off the hook.  And then she continues to make bad choices, knowing she won't be held accountable.

As she quietly teared up saying how sorry she was and how bad she felt, I let her insincere apology (because it was, in that moment, insincere) run down.  

Then I said 'Fine, feel bad.  Feel bad all you like.  But what are you going to do to make it right?"

That startled the tears right out of her.  "What?!"  I repeated the question.  "What are you going to do to help make the harm you have caused me 'right'?"

For several seconds she sat there with you mouth agape, while I quietly sat, waiting for an answer.

Finally she stammered "I don't know what I can do!"

So I told her what she could do to help make things 'better'.  

We came to an agreement and a few days later she left.  As it happens she did not complete what I had set out as what was required to make things 'right' and I dusted off my hands and let it go.

Interestingly enough, I got an email from her about 10 months later, thanking me for all I had taught her.  I doubt she was referring to just the weaving.

I wish her well, and hope that she learned that mistakes are just mistakes.  That we can learn and grow.  And choose to make different choices.  Cause less harm.  We are all human, and life is a journey.

So, don't get too bent out of shape if you run into problems.  If you make mistakes.  Learn and grow.  Embrace your mistakes as the learning opportunities they can be.  If we just allow them to teach us.