Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

I’ve made fewer mistakes than I wish I had. Took fewer chances than others. Played it safe. Feared unknown outcomes, assumed more negative possibilities than a single event could ever unleash. Stood at the sidelines while friends and acquaintances ran headlong into adventures that I deemed too scary. I’m a planner. I like to know in advance what will happen. I get things right with an astonishing base rate. I get things done. I can figure out the quickest way to accomplish several errands, pick up dinner ingredients, get to a meeting at my son’s school, return emails, throw a load of laundry in, head out the door and make it to work with a few minutes to spare.

I have spent a lot of my life wanting to be right. To do things well. To succeed. To know things. I do not like making mistakes, and when I do, an individual mistake becomes a monumental under-accomplishment. My mistakes mean something to me. They signal some kind of personal failure, rather than an expected and necessary component of life, a sign of my belonging to the human race. This, of course, is an outrageous misuse of narcissism. Do I really believe I am so unlike the other 7 billion humans on this planet that I expect to make fewer boneheaded errors, forget fewer things, step less on the actual and emotional toes of my loved ones? And why do I believe that any act I make has any large significance – even my successes?

My son is now in middle school. The welcome-to-school BBQ included a presentation by the Principal, the assistant Principal, the 8th grade president of the student government (who plays soccer and takes classes in leadership and is part of the pre-selected group of 8th graders chosen and trained to welcome the incoming 6th graders to make sure everyone belongs) and the teacher who heads up leadership and belongingness programming. Middle school apparently is not the same animal as it was when I was 12.

The Principal began by welcoming the parents, and assuring us that we were all going to get through the next few years. She remembers her middle school years, without much to enjoy in memories of what was, for her, a difficult time. She assumes that many parents in the room had a difficult, painful, confusing middle school experience. She wants us to know that “We,” – here she means the global “we” – parents, students, staff – “are going to get through this together. I haven’t lost one yet.”

She then went on to tell parents that middle school is the time for mistakes. She hopes our children make many mistakes. Try something and fail. Try something else and do a little bit better. She hopes kids make some big mistakes now, in middle school, where the consequences are likely to be brief and won’t change a full life course’s trajectory. She wants the kids to mess up now so they can learn how to do something more effectively later. She’s the head of a school where all the staff are lying in wait for the missteps, wrong words, emotional outbursts, careless acts, overly-personalized stresses of wondering who one is and why a treasured friend has just hurt them. This is a place where people are aware that at this age, kids are likely to make choices based on strong emotions and changing friendship circles and hormonal surges and confusing times and shifting roles in the family and the push/pull of seeking independence and the deep need to feel connected and understood. And that many of these choices are likely to be mistakes.

It all sounds good to me, the parent of a child who makes fewer mistakes and takes less risks and basically is an emotive clone to my “get it right” standards which will serve him as poorly as they have served me.  I frequently tell him that, despite how I was trained and live, I want him to understand he can make mistakes, ought to make mistakes, that it’s only in the mistakes where we can learn. I can talk it like I mean it, but I’m sure he knows I abhor my own mistakes and pretty much never want to make one.

Allowing oneself to make mistakes assumes that we don’t know everything and that this is OK. That we have to be in a place of not-knowing in order to learn something new (duh, but really, how often do we ever teach this to people?). And that if non-knowing is the essential starting place for learning, let’s assume that it’s a safe place. Then we wouldn’t have to be closed and smarmy in our self-righteous knowledge, warding off and defending against new ideas, new ways of doing things which might actually be better than the things we do and know now. Alas, I am often a closed system, as any system must be if it can never make mistakes.

Whereas kids and parents are often afraid the mistakes will follow them for the rest of the school year (or life), the Principal told us that she and her staff are ready to come back the next day and assume a fresh start. Your child will get a second chance. A third, fourth, or fifth, if needed. And here’s where what she said veered right off. An actual second chance. One that assumes you are still a good person, with many talents and strengths and abilities and competencies even if you did a boneheaded thing yesterday. Even if you did a REALLY dumb thing yesterday. Dumb enough to hurt yourself, embarrass yourself, hurt others, maybe even leave a visible trace that will take a bit to fade. Because, according to this world view, you are not defined by your mistakes. You are the person in between the mistakes.

Oh, what I would have done to be a person known as the one between the mistakes. To be able to forgive myself and others, because perhaps the Principal just defined what forgiveness actually is: the ability to see and hold a person in their totality. They are no better than their successes, no worse than their mistakes, and no one success or mistake can alter this mixed-bag, 360 degree view of the wholeness of a person. I don’t know exactly where this changes – i.e. the size of the mistakes we can make before the view really ought to tilt. But that’s a sociological argument that doesn’t apply to most middle school mistakes (or, for that matter, adult mistakes).

The big middle school mistakes – lying, cheating, boasting, plagiarizing, being mean, stealing, betraying, cussing – how many can there be? – will be made along with everyday failures – unbrushed/unflossed teeth, dirty clothes stashed under the bed, eating too many sweets, forgetting homework, losing important papers from school, stealth computer gaming.

I’ve made some pretty big mistakes. Some have changed the trajectory of my life, most changed nothing larger than my sense of myself. I did not believe I was more than my mistakes, or that the learning I did from them was an expected, normal part of life. Each mistake seemed to impress upon me more the sense of urgency to get the next things right. This began to mellow a bit in my 40s, but I confess I can still feel the pull on everyday and larger decisions that come up now. And whatever mistakes I made, I don’t actually regret them. I get that my life could not be as it is now, the happiest, most contented phase I’ve ever been in, had a single millisecond of my past differed.

My son is set to spend three years in a land of second chances. Obviously I yearn for his successes, but I will spend the next three years doing what the Principal is going to do – encourage him to care about success, sure, but not enough to avoid failure.  I hope he takes grand chances, fails hugely because he tried something far outside his usual zone, shakes himself off and heads off for another adventure, his sense of self completely intact, if just a bit bruised by disappointment.

As  I enter my 5th decade, I will claim the Principal’s ideology for my own. I will expect some big old, stupid mistakes of myself. I will try things, and fail. Try some other things, and perhaps not fail. Have more adventures. Learn things I never thought I’d learn, but do so willingly. I will expect everyone around me to wallop themselves, and perhaps me, with a good bunch of stupid, short-sighted, dumb, hurtful actions, things that at middle school are now called “poor choices.” I vow to inhabit the place of knowing far less than I ever imagined I would know, and cultivate forgiveness. Actual forgiveness. I will hold my loved ones in their totality, knowing full well their successes and good traits and generosity and love far outweigh their flaws and mistakes. I will edge toward the next milestone birthday having attempted to hold myself to this standard, as well.

I want to spend the rest of my life in the land of second chances.