I’m reading quotes about living with mistakes tonight. As a parent, I got to make many…picking up the salt instead of the sugar cannister for the koolaid, not combing the carpet for iron pills before going to the emergency room, not fighting for my instincts… I let people close to me convince me that I was over protective, and let them convince me later that I was underprotective. So, I’m thinking about how to live with mistakes.
These are some quotes I’ve come across:
Can you leave it all behind? Cause you can’t go back.
That’s a pretty good one. Now I need some quotes on how to leave it all behind….
Yes, the past can hurt but the way I see it you can either run from it or learn from it.
This one is spot on I think. I had read “Wherever you go…There you are” which was like a smack in the head with a board. I’ve walked away from a few things. Mostly not trusting my instincts, partly not wanting to confront conflicts, and partly, having played the cards up to the brink, and had to follow through and leave or fold. Leaving is marginally better. But the key is learning. Don’t ignore the little voice inside. Something that seems out of control is probably out of control. Do what you can to help, but, look at the bigger picture…we all have people who we need to be ready to help…and doing that sometimes means not helping one, to be able to help the other….That’s convoluted and probably is equivocating, but, if you throw yourself on the fire, you won’t be able to help the next person that falls in.
Never say sorry for something you meant to do.
This one is especially tricky. Life throws things at you, sometimes they are disasters, sometimes tragedies, sometimes potential disaster/tragedy, and sometimes life throws you a chance. It gets hard when life throws all of them at you in the same few weeks. Take the opportunity, work through the disaster as best you can, honor and remember the tragedy (today’s task), and put contingencies in place for the potential disasters/tragedies. And no, there’s no way you can do them all and keep everyone happy. Mostly because, people in disasters, people who’ve endured tragedy, don’t know what they need from you, and if you haven’t experienced something similar, you don’t know either. So if you meant to accept the opportunity, and then the disaster and tragedy occurs, you do your best, and know it won’t be enough.
Don’t be afraid to go after what you want to do, and what you want to be. But don’t be afraid to be willing to pay the price.
And of course with this one, the real challenge is, you never know the price until later. Sometimes two years later. You pay it, of course, but if you’d known the real price up front…well maybe it wouldn’t have seemed like an opportunity….
I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mending whole was good as new. What is broken is broken – and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.
This one is, from my experience, true, and I’m remembering it this few weeks.
Look after each other. Help each other remember it at its best.
