Mar 03 2010

Mistakes

Category: Soft Edges — Jim Taylor @ 12:01 am

Wednesday March 3, 2010

Getting it wrong

By Jim Taylor

I’ll start with a correction. Nathan Piché’s memorial bench on the waterfront of Okanagan Lake is not illegal, as I suggested in last week’s column.
        Steve Schaffrick, Director of Parks and Recreation for the District of Lake Country (DLC), corrected me in an e-mail. “The cost of the bench was picked up by friends of the family,” he explained, “but we bought and installed the bench, so the DLC owns it. This is significantly different from the private docks and structures that we removed from the Greenspace, as those were private [and] not approved by the DLC.”
        I was wrong. I should have called Steve before rushing to meet my deadline, but I didn’t.
        Obviously, therefore, my speculation about the origins of the bench was also unfounded and ill-advised.

Learning from mistakes
        I don’t like being wrong. I don’t know anyone who does.
        But as I examined my own reactions, I started wondering why it’s so hard for most of us – including me – to admit when we might have been wrong.
        Because, in fact, getting it wrong is how we learn to get it right.
        I know, that assertion runs contrary to common sense. We think we learn by getting it right. “Practice makes perfect,” we say.
        We forget how many times a child has to fall before he learns to walk. How many times a child struggles with recalcitrant shoelaces before she learns to tie a bow. How many times a violinist must rehearse a concerto to get all those notes just right…
        We learn from our mistakes. That’s not an invitation to make mistakes. Certainly not for a neurosurgeon slicing into your brain. Or an engineer, building a bridge you’ll drive across..
        Naturally, we all want to make as few mistakes as possible. But the two greatest mistakes we can make are
– to pretend we never make mistakes;
– to refuse to learn from the mistakes we do make.

Beyond entrenched habits
        As we age, we develop routines that help us avoid embarrassment and humiliation. Not because we’re smarter. But because when we stick with the tried and true, our slips are less frequent, less exposed.
        Thus, repetition teaches us how to drive a car or operate a debit card.
        Familiar patterns may even keep some relationships on the rails.
        But entrenched mental habits can be deadly. Even when contrary evidence piles up, we tend to cling tenaciously to long-held convictions. We refuse to consider the possibility of being wrong.
        Indeed, the more a contrary viewpoint achieves prominence, the more some people insist that no one else can sift the truth from a fog of propaganda and conspiracy.
        We act like parents, watching troops march past, assuring each other, “The whole army’s out of step but our John!”
        And when convictions are built on theology, ideology, politics, or ancient grievances, we’re even less likely to admit we might have been wrong. We cannot – or will not — see the issue any other way.
        In that context, recognizing that one was wrong would be a major step forward.
        But nobody ever promised it would be easy.

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Your Turn



As you will have gathered from the opening paragraphs of this week’s column, some parts of last week’s column deeply offended friends of the boy memorialized by a park bench along the waterfront.
        I’ve been unsure what to do about the letters they wrote me. They came entirely from local residents, responding to the column that appeared in the local newspaper; they are not part of this e-mail subscription list. So they would not be aware that I have a space in this e-mailing for feedback from readers.
        Interestingly, I received no criticisms whatsoever from subscribers.
        About half of those letters were directly personally to me. But the other half made no pretence of being private correspondence. The writers also sent them to the editor of the local newspaper, and often also to their own lists of contacts.
        After considerable soul-searching, I have decided not to reprint any of those letters. They were all judgemental; pretty inflammatory; a few bordered on hate mail. Most were also quite wordy. I could only have published excerpts. And I was a little afraid of my own motivations for printing anything from them – I’m still smarting a little from their accusations — perhaps hoping that you, the e-mail readers, would re-assure me that I had not transgressed the bounds of responsible writing as much as the letter-writers felt I had.
        The barrage of letters has, however, given me some insights into the style and nature of correspondence facilitated by electronic means, which I will probably incorporate into some future column.

I did receive a note from Becca Stevens, from whose book I had quoted. She wrote, “Thank you for the kind mention in your blog. It is nice to make connections. I was at a church yesterday with a make-shift memorial of small metal-like plates stuck in a group by the altar with names, dates, and what piece of altar trimming was given in their honor. The tiny memorials weren’t even lined up. I don’t know yet if I loved it, or felt saddened by it, or both. I do know I love all our clumsy attempts to try and immortalize each other. I guess the goal is to let go gracefully. I take comfort in thinking about fallen trees slowly returning to the earth.”

And Deborah Lawson sent along a story from her church newsletter about a discovery made during some renovations.
        “Gail came upstairs with three old glass Pepsi Cola bottles, covered with dust and remnants of the liquid dried on one side…. These were found by the bathroom renovators, stored in one of the walls…. they were most likely placed there by some young men, left as something to be found years later … about 56 years I think. These bottles have been here since about 1954. I suspect that these young men would have been overseas during the war, were back home and working, grateful to have lived through the war, grateful to be home, grateful for jobs and drinking pop on a break. I suspect as they placed the bottles, there might have been conversation around wondering who would find these and how long from now….”
        Deborah concluded, “It seems that the urge to be remembered even extends to anonymous remembrance!”

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About My Books



Over the years, I think I have written (or ghostwritten) about 17 books. Several of them (mercifully) are no longer available from any source. But here’s a listing of those that are still available. The ones marked “WLB”, you can order from Wood Lake Books, either on-line at http://www.woodlakebooks.com, or call Wood Lake Books directly at 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-654-5129 (Pilgrim Press) in the U.S. The ones marked “JT only” are now available only directly from me — as collector’s items, I price them all at $25 Cdn.

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