Modern society is so obsessed with perfection, that we find it difficult to forgive mistakes. I'm not talking about crimes here. I'm talking about honest to goodness mistakes. Leaving the lights on when you walk out of the house. Addressing a letter (or email) to the wrong person. Dialing a wrong number. Of course, some mistakes are worse than others and can cause actual harm. Not that we want to admit it. Denial is also big in our modern culture. So long as we don't admit we made a mistake, then it wasn't a mistake, right?
At the end of the day, humanity is fallible, despite our fantasies to the contrary. Despite media portrayals of perfect celebrities, despite religious demands of a perfect life, and despite politicians wagging their fingers at us telling us that "we're better than that" in direct contradiction to their own behavior. We forget that humanity is not hardwired for the ideals of perfection presented to us by modern society and media.
As a database administrator, I don't like taking risks. Risks are bad for business, not to mention that one little mistake can get me in a lot of trouble. But as a writer, I find myself taking risks every time I write down a word. I risk never finishing a project or having a proposal rejected. But the funny thing is, risk taking is the only way we learn.
Tech people say "If you're not breaking something, you're obviously not working." It's a truism of the industry that you can't fix what's broken, or learn how to fix broke, if you've never actually broken anything yourself. I got my PC support start the hard way when I tried to upgrade my work PC, hosed the operating system, and couldn't restore because I was missing key Windows 98 repair components. I learned a lot from that incident and have used those lessons every day of my techie life.
As a writer, I was spoiled by my first publishing experience. My first editor didn't destroy my work and the invite I received for that anthology had me thinking I was going places fast. Boy, was I wrong. My second editor taught me a lot about writing for publication by making my manuscripts bleed and the dearth of acceptances (and anthology invites) after my first story, taught me that the only person who could get me published was me. If that weren't enough, my first few proposals with Catalyst Game Labs got rejected because I wasn't taking enough risk. "The stakes aren't high enough," I was told. Once I started throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at the wall, I started getting writing assignments.
There's nothing wrong with taking risks. There's nothing wrong with making mistakes. The thing that is wrong is when we don't, or can't, admit that we've made them. People say and do stupid things, even the brightest of us. It's when we try denial or covering them up that real problems occur.
I'm not the only person who thinks this. Jeff Stibel of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. happens to agree with this philosophy. He actively recruits "people who fail" and keeps a failure wall at his office to inspire his employees. Billy Joel has a song about it (Only Human), with a very good point that "mistakes are the only things that you can call your own."
So, relax. We don't need to be perfect. It's enough that we recognize our mistakes when we make them and that we do our best to learn the lessons offered by the opportunity.
