To Err Is Human

The phrase "To err is human" is a subset of a quote from an ancient Latin proverb. The full quote is "To err is human, but to persist in error (out of pride) is diabolical".  English poet Alexander Pope added “to forgive, divine” to this proverb, and it became a very famous quote.



I've always loved the 80's song "I'm Only Human" by the Human League because it speaks truth. The chorus says:

I'm only human
Of flesh and blood I'm made
Human
Born to make mistakes

When we makes mistakes, we can choose to:

A. Learn from them; or
B. Ignore the lesson, and more than likely, repeat the mistake

Fortunately, every day brings about opportunities to exercise this choice.  When we ignore the lesson, we're acting foolish,  Foolishness is when we have a gut feeling not to do something, but we do it anyway, and we justify our actions by deceiving ourselves into thinking we were right to do what we did all along.  We start thinking anyone would have done the same thing in that situation, and can even start blaming others for making us do what we chose to do (peer pressure, our upbringing, someone else who made us angry, etc). There's a lack of personal accountability.

When we choose to learn from the mistake without repeating it, we grow wiser.  We take full accountability for our actions, blaming no one but ourselves, and do the best we can to not let it happen again.  We'll even warn people by openly sharing our mistakes and consequences so that the same mistake can be avoided by others.

When others make mistakes that impact us, we also have a choice in how we handle the situation.  Do we choose to:

A. Forgive the person that made the mistake, recognizing that we're all only human; or
B. Put down the person by calling them names (stupid, b*tch, a**shole), either to their face,or to ourselves

Yesterday, someone who knows me very well was helping me do some hard work.  We had been at it for hours, and were both getting tired.  I was ready to stop working, even though we weren't finished, so that we could do something more fun.  I hugged and thanked the person for their help, and before I could make the suggestion to take a break to go shopping, the person had jumped to the conclusion that I wanted them to leave.  

In that instance, I could have gotten defensive, and hurt by this, but instead, I assumed good intent (an honest misunderstanding), spent time clarifying my intentions, and let it go.  In the end, we went shopping, and everything was just fine.

Many times, when we make mistakes, we expect others to quickly forgive us and tend to downplay the severity of our mistake to make ourselves feel better.  Yet, when others make mistakes, we can be slow to forgive. We'll dwell on what happened and gossip about it before we let it go. Some of us don't let it go at all.

Think about what you do when faced with these daily choices.  Do you acknowledge your mistakes and learn from them?  Are you quick to forgive others for their mistakes?  Try spending more time thinking about why you do what you do, and less time worried about what others do to you.