making mistakes
The Fringe Festival is a two-week performance festival, where all sorts of performances can be found--plays, musicals, magic shows, stand-up comedy, you name it. In today's New York Times blogs, Jason Zinoman focuses on an exciting aspect of live performance--its unpredictability.
Unwittingly perhaps, he writes something that isn't only applicable to performance:
"In fact, besides introducing a certain kind of spontaneity and titillating uncertainty that can only take place in live performance, what makes bloopers so interesting is the opportunity they provide for the performers to display their quickness, wit or personality, uninterrupted by the dictates of the author.
Disasters, oddly, are the only time when the actors are completely in control."
In school, teachers have always drummed the importance of getting the right answer into their students. Dispassionate red marks would often encircle or cross out our unfortunate mistakes. Whether consciously or unconsciously, each student graduates with the simple equation: mistakes = BAD, pre-set correct answers = GOOD.
That might have worked decades ago, when life was more predictable, but now, experimentation is the key. While many of us have learned the tried and tested answers, not many of us have learned the courage it takes to try a different response to the same problem.
Thankfully, we are starting to wake up. Lightning quick changes in technology (and life) has prompted many to start exploring once again--to start trying new things. After all, in this day and age, what isn't new?
So, while mistakes are still socially unaccepted and embarrassing, I would argue you can't live a full life without making a few turn-as-red-as-a-tomato-whenever-it's-brought-up ones. Mistakes help shape the person you will become. Like actors on the stage, they let you find out how much you are capable of when s*** hits the fan. No one likes them, but, like ampalaya (bitter melon), it's good for you.