A moment is all that stands between now and then. Those words said cannot be unsaid. That silence cannot be returned to, and filled in with all you should have said as she turned away. All our moments are irredeemable in that way. Our mistakes are there for us to see. They are the ghosts of our mistakes haunting every subsequent move we make.
However, we should not let our fears of those ghosts paralyse us. We have to learn to live with them, learn from them, realise that everyone makes mistakes. We should all know that everyone makes far more mistakes than they get things right. It is important to understand that mistakes are something we learn from, grow from, if we are wise enough to use them well, to learn from them. An even bigger mistake is to pretend that your mistakes never happened, that you have been right in everything you have ever done. That is not just being mistaken; that is being an idiot.
None of us is perfection and no-one will ever achieve perfection, the best we can do is try to get as close to it as we can. In life we all eventually lose, because we will all – one day – lose this life, but what matters is not the act of losing – as it is inevitable – but how well we lose, with grace, with dignity, with understanding, with wisdom. Just as Socrates said “The unexamined life is not worth living.” it is not also worth dying with.
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