This week, we’re talking about mistakes.  We are all prone to them, but why is it that we make mistakes in the first place?  Whether it is on an exam, in a cooking recipe, or while we’re driving, is it just happenstance that we mess up occasionally, or is there something else that causes us to err?

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said that

“It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes.  It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions—especially selfish ones.”

Mistakes are rarely genuinely innocent.  After all, we say we’re sorry when we make them; we acknowledge that we are at fault.  Perhaps that is because, as Solzhenitsyn observed, mistakes tend to be the result of our pursuit of an easier way, of taking a shortcut, or giving insufficient attention to our task.  And we do those things, because we allow ourselves to be guided by “our emotions—especially selfish ones.” 

It may be uncomfortable to think of our mistakes as a form of selfishness—but to think of them otherwise is to take “the easiest and most comfortable course.”  And that turns out to be its own mistake.

Have a wonderful day.