DUKES FANS:
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” Mahatma Gandhi
“To err is human; to forgive, divine.” Alexander Pope
“He who makes no mistakes makes nothing.” Anon.
“Form does not follow function. Form follows failure.”
“Necessity is not the mother of invention; failure is.”
both by Henry Petroski
The above quotes are amongst my favorite quotes about mistakes, error, and failure. I chose to open this newsletter with them because I made a mistake in the last newsletter, and I need to ‘fess up. In the last newsletter I wrote about being on the east side of Market Street for the first time in a long while and about walking along Market Street down to 6th Street. I reminisced about some places I passed along the way, and I specifically talked about the Philly Thanksgiving Day parades that I had enjoyed as a kid. I said the parade ended with Santa going up on a fire truck ladder to his Playland to meet and to take Christmas wish lists from kids. And I said this happened at Lits Brothers Department Store. The only problem was that it wasn’t Lits Brothers Department Store that Santa climbed into. It was Gimbels Brothers, which used to be at 8th and Market. I made a big mistake.
My sister caught the error right away, and she let me know that I had made a mistake. A couple of other people also pointed it out, and I knew that I had to come clean. So I am. I like what old Southern bluesmen I knew used to say when they made an error recalling something: “I just disremembered.” I like that because it is accurate. I didn’t forget everything: the feelings, thoughts, and all of the other observations were correct. I just mistakenly forgot a small but significant part of it. Disremembered, indeed.
What is interesting about that, though, is where all of that led me. I was talking with a friend about my mistake, and he mentioned an NPR series from several years ago that had focused on the purpose and benefits that often come from failing and making mistakes. I had the, “He who makes no mistakes” quote hanging in the front of my classroom for much of my teaching career; I wanted my students to feel and to know that learning often involved “being wrong” and “failing.” I felt that as long as we can look at our failures and get something from them, we were learning, and that was the goal, after all. So, I was very interested in that NPR series.
I eventually found the series, but in looking for it I took some interesting "wrong turns” that had some great snippets about ways seeming failure can be the gateway to new discoveries, changes, realizations, and more. As one person said in one of the snippets, “We only learn to walk by failing at it hundreds of times.” I also found some interesting comments about what business failures could lead to and a grandfather's thoughts about his daughter’s first day in kindergarten. So for me, that Gimbels Brothers error allowed me to get to a place where I could explore this theme in a broader and more nuanced way and make some interesting finds. A mistake leading to something else....indeed. It is often that way with us humans.
Of course, I hope I did not make any more content mistakes in this newsletter (smile), and I don’t think I did. But I will see. And who knows? If I did, I may be sent on another unexpected trek and learn something new. And that would not be a bad thing.
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