Are Mistakes Bad?

If I wrote down all the wrong choices I made in recent months after moving for university, you would probably think I'm either crazy or too bold. Even to this day, I question my decision of leaving my home country for my studies abroad: is it worth the student loan? is it worth the loneliness I sometimes find myself wallowing in? is it worth the uncertainty? I wish I knew the answer to all those questions, and more. Yet, I trust that they will soon reveal to me when they are ready - it is often not in our place at certain points in time to find out what life intends for us, all at once. For only through the process of living do we gradually realize what's best for us, and what isn't.

I wish this year would have been kinder to me. But it's probably for the best that it hasn't fully appeased my expectations; otherwise life would've been too placid, too bland. If everything went our way, there wouldn't have been any form of pleasure or satisfaction in struggling for ourselves: for our goals day to day, our little aspirations. Making a wrong choice, regardless of having thought them through with all the mental faculties we possessed at one point in the past, and looking back at it from retrospect at the other side with all our wounds - the experience still feels valuable to me. The choice (which seemed right then) has dwindled away to an ineffectual non-existence with good reason: it has made my mind broader, my experiential sensibilities deeper. I think we only begin to understand ourselves a little better once we've come to terms with our ability to freely make mistakes, and learn from them, and be okay with losing people along the way.

Moving forward with choices beyond my comfort zone forced me to contemplate on new sensations: walking through the city center alone while feeling desolate inside reminded me of how much I had missed myself in pursuing something that was not meant for me. I lost a friend this year because she thought I was trying to steal her lover. I gained a friend this year because both of us clicked under the most peculiar circumstances. I took several leaps of faith without really considering their consequences, and have felt both happiness and sadness on their account. But I would never replace my sufferings with only jubilant memories. I think that the regretful tears we've shed in the past over difficult circumstances or mistakes allow us to be grateful for the present more deeply. And then we put away the past experiences in little glass cases in our minds, for us to look at from time to time; to remember their beauty and how we have chosen to move on from them.

Are mistakes bad? Personally, I don't think so. I think they are indispensable to the human character, provided that they don't cause lasting negative effects on others. Withdrawing from adverse situations with grace for the sake of protecting one's own self-respect after having willfully participated in something that was doomed from the very beginning is very brave, I feel. And it's worth it to have been a part of something which probably wasn't in our best interests to begin with. How else could we have known it to be so? - You don't know if something is suitable for you or not unless you actually try it. It all really comes down to the kind of calculated or blatant risks which we choose to take.

I once read somewhere that closure is a myth. That the 'closure' which people seek can be found entirely within themselves. All that matters is whether you can forgive yourself for having made that big (or small) lapse in judgement. And whether you can fully believe in the fact that you will be a stronger person because of it. Making mistakes is like a rite of passage in becoming better and more self-aware. And I love it.

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