It's ok to make mistakes

An old man was seated with his favorite grandson under a mango tree chatting. He shared tales of travelling hundreds of miles with cattle looking for water.

He talked of covering the same hundreds of miles to trade in salt, paraffin and other merchandise.

Being a great story teller, he transfixed the young man who now forgot about going out to play his old soccer ball made out of banana fibres. Noticing the level of attention, the old man decided to drop in a lesson.

Tapping him on the shoulder with his rough hands, he started to illuminate: “Grandson, in all this, can you guess what my greatest lesson was?”

“Of course, I don’t know grand pa. I was not there when you were going through all this. Can I run and ask my dad?”

“Not at all, just sit down, I will tell you,” the old man said while giving him a grandfatherly tap on the shoulder again.

“You see, when I was starting out, I kicked off with rearing and selling goats. But I didn’t realize that there were too many people doing the same. So, I struggled to make a good profit.”

“So your lesson was that other people reared goats?”

“Why don’t you listen first? Just like your father, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry grand pa.”

“For me, it was a realization that cows would do better because very few people were trading in cows. It was also a realization that merchandise would work because of the same reasons. One would take it that I had spent three wasted years. But not me; I invested three years to figure out what was not working and what could possibly work.”

“And at the end of my learning, I noted that it’s ok to make mistakes. It was my biggest lesson.”

“You are talking about mistakes being good. How come my dad always beats me when I commit a mistake?”

“I doubt whether he does that because I taught him the same lesson.”

“But he does.”

“Let me guess, the first time, you make the mistake, he warns you about it. When you repeat the same mistake, he punishes you, isn’t it?”

“Aaahhhh…you are very right…the second time I delayed at the well while playing soccer, he really punished me.”

“Mistakes are only dangerous when you don’t learn from them. Either someone punishes you or life does it. So, never fear to take action worrying about potential mistakes. Take action.

“Make the mistakes as early as possible. Learn as fast as you can from your successes and mistakes. That’s how you grow faster.”

                                                                                   ethan mussolini