Thursday Thoughts...

“I have made many mistakes in my life, and I am, in retrospect, quite grateful for all of them” 

 Augusten Burroughs

Absolutes are never really my thing, and I read through this one and thought - wow, he seems very confident about this! And on investigating him, it is clear I missed the cultural moments when he was a  runaway best seller.

Nevertheless, the ideas contained within this quote made me stop and reflect, look back, and think about mistakes I have made. 

There are enough to consider. There are the big ones where you know you behaved badly and which leave you feeling icky many years further along. There are moments when you stuffed up and yet things worked out OK! There are moments that felt like the end of the world at the time and yet with time and distance you can see their value and indeed be grateful.

One of the challenges in this for me is that he says he is grateful for all of them. As I look back, I get the feeling I am grateful that I made a number of them, but by no means all of them. How can one be grateful if a mistake you made caused others significant harm? If the mistake you made meant you missed a great opportunity about which you remain wistful? If the mistake you made created economic uncertainty that limited your life choices?

Perhaps his modifier of quite grateful covers some of those.  My sense is that if the mistake had really negative impacts it is OK not to be grateful for it. You can acknowledge it, somehow find acceptance of the path that followed it, but I am a bit wary of gratitude for bad things.

I am grateful for many, but not all of my mistakes.