"Mistakes"

I was talking to two different friends this week and they both mentioned mistakes that they have made in the past, and were ruing their decisions.

In the past few years given Pedro's treatment, my divorce and my own spiritual journey, I don't see things as "mistakes," or poor decisions. I see people doing the best they could do at the time with the skills they had. 

At this stage of my life, I have friends who are caring for elderly parents who can't fully care for themselves, and with that comes difficult choices. I see friends wanting to care for their relatives, but then they might discover the task is more than they can handle. They were optimistic, hoping for the best. Was the decision to care for their family a mistake?

I don't think so. In crisis management, we have to make decisions with incomplete information. What if we make a "mistake" or a wrong decision?

We make a new decision. We have the freedom to change our minds and change directions. It doesn't mean the past was a mistake. It means we didn't have complete information. Now we have more information, information that may tell us we need to change.

I have another friend who made some bad relationship choices. Actually, I have lots of friends who have been in relationships that needed to end. Does that mean those relationships were "mistakes?"

I recently read Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life by Christine Tate about her experience in group therapy. Her goal was to find a steady, stable, and fulfilling relationship. Her story was brilliant in how she dated loser and after loser, but each loser was a notch better than the one before. This was her learning. She learned from each miserable relationship what she wanted, what she liked, and how to relate. She didn't wave a magic wand and all of a sudden Prince Charming appeared. She had these painful experiences in order to grow.

Are there such things as mistakes? Sure. I think most mistakes arrive when we are self-centered instead of self-focused. (We are self-focused when we operate from our soul. We are self-centered when we operate from our ego.) Maybe we are afraid to end a relationship, so we misbehave, act out, and throw tantrums instead of ending things in a respectful and dignified manner. Our mistakes more lie in how we do things than what we do. It isn't wrong to break up with someone. I might be unkind and hurtful to ghost people or dump them and call them names.