We all make mistakes. That’s why there are erasers on pencils, reverse gears in cars, delete keys on computers, U-turns and summer school.
One of my favorite presidents was Gerald Ford. One reason that I liked him was that he was a lousy golfer. The newscasts often showed clips of people being hit by his golf ball. He was so bad at golf that when he hit a shot, people yelled “Eight!” instead of “Fore!”
He made other mistakes as well. One day he arrived at the airport in France in front of 800 elite French troops in their uniforms, the entire diplomatic corps, and President Pompidou. Ford stepped out of the plane, waved to the crowd, and tumbled down the stairs. A tissue was offered and declined. He got up, laughed, brushed off his clothes, strolled forward with a big smile, and took the arm of the Spanish ambassador, who was standing next to Pompidou. He walked off with him down the red carpet, leaving Pompidou staring after him in amazement. We all make mistakes, even presidents.
The more new things you try, the more mistakes you’re likely to make. One father says that every time his son drives the car, it’s like starting a new paragraph — he always indents.
We overlook mistakes when it is to our advantage. I heard about a guy who was overpaid at work by a huge sum of money, but he didn’t say anything. A couple of weeks later, he was underpaid. He went in and said, “Look, I was underpaid this week.” They said, “Yes, but last week we overpaid you, and you didn’t say anything.” He said, “Well, I figure everybody’s entitled to one mistake. Since you made two, I thought I should let you know.”
The first thing to do when you make a mistake is to admit it. As a female shopper exited a convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give the police a detailed description of the snatcher. Within minutes, the police had apprehended the thief. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The man was taken out of the car and told to stand for a positive ID, to which he replied, “Yes, officer. That’s her. That’s the lady I stole the purse from.”
We can learn from our mistakes, but we can also profit from our mistakes. Although his daughter’s name is today more widely recognized than his, a famed ventriloquist would have died in obscurity had he not learned to profit from his mistakes. This young boy was very interested in photography, so he dutifully saved his money to buy a photography book from a mail-order catalog. The publisher made a mistake with the order and sent a book on ventriloquism instead. The boy had no idea what the book was about and was saddened that he had not received his long-anticipated book on photography. He didn’t know he could return the book, so he kept it and began to read about a subject of which he had never heard. His interest grew, and he soon learned to masterfully throw his voice. He eventually got a dummy that he named Charlie McCarthy, and Edgar Bergen was on his way to international fame. Needless to say, his daughter, Candice Bergen, has enjoyed the fame of that name as well. And it all started with a mistake.
I would be mistaken if I didn’t point out that mistakes could become masterpieces. A tourist in the Orient noticed an unusual training session and stopped to observe. A master weaver was working on a large piece of tapestry, and behind him stood 10 apprentice weavers in a semicircle working on their own similar projects. As the master wove a pattern, the apprentices very carefully copied him, trying to duplicate the same pattern. When an apprentice would make a mistake, the master weaver would walk over to his place, very intently study his pattern, and then begin to weave an entirely different pattern. Using the mistake the apprentice had made, he turned it into a masterpiece.
So, as you go through a life of mistakes, don’t suffer from mistaken identity. Identify those mistakes you don’t want to repeat, those you can learn from, and those that, with some help from the Master, could be the piece your life’s puzzle needs.