“Omnipotence cannot change the past, so why should we try? Our duty is to compel that past to vitalize our future with new courage and purpose, making it a larger, greater future than would have been possible without the past that has so grieved us. If we can get real, fine, appetizing dividends from our mistakes they prove themselves not losses but—wise investments. They seem like old mining shares, laid aside in the lavender of memory of our optimism and now, by some sudden change in the market of speculation, proved to be of real value.
Realizing mistakes is good; realizing on them is better. When a captain finds his vessel is out of the right channel, carried, by negligence, by adverse winds or by blundering through a fog, from the true course, he wastes no time in bemoaning his mistake but at the first sunburst takes new bearings, changes his course, steers bravely towards his harbour with renewed courage to make up the time he has lost. The mistake means— increased care and greater speed.” – William George Jordan
Great is the man who learns from his mistakes and moves on. Petty is he who blames his past failures on others, rather than simply seeing his own part in the matter, making the internal changes necessary to avoid repeating the error and moving on. Have you ever noticed that human beings have an odd tendency to add injury to insult when it comes to dealing with mistakes? They blame, deny, accuse, avoid, deflect and more rather than realizing the mistake, changing their orientation and pushing courageously forward.
You may recall the story of Montresor and Fortunado in Edgar Allen Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, where Montresor felt irreparably insulted by his acquaintance, Fortunado, and he sought to exact revenge in a way that would not put himself at risk. Fortunado was lured into Montresor’s vault by the prospect of a rare pipe of Amontillado, and was then chained up in a small crypt by Montresor who then built a brick wall, with the intent of killing Fortunado by immurement. A terrible tale, indeed, illuminating the darker side of human nature as Poe did so well on so many occasions, but one that you may have had experience with personally at some point in your life.
Revenge is never a creative motivation. It is especially damaging when it is played out anonymously. Cowardice leads men to the lowest of deeds, often undertaken de cape et d’épée, for they cannot own up to their own responsibility in the choices they’ve made. They cloak themselves in some form of anonymity to avoid detection and carry a dagger, a longtime weapon of choice favored for its silent lethality. Such is the sad state of a man fallen from his rightful and noble place in the world.
Surely we can do better as a species, as a race, as individuals. But this sad tale unfolds every day in untold millions of households, business offices and virtual sites on the internet.
Jordan noted that: “Realizing mistakes is good, realizing on them is better” and I am in complete and total agreement with his advice in this case. The tendency to seek revenge bewilders the avenger to the point that he can no longer see clearly. His ability to reason, to recognize and come to terms with his mistakes is shut down and he consequently will never have the time, energy or perspective to “realize on” his mistakes and earn thereby the “real, fine, appetizing dividends” that are the profits earned whenever a mistake is handled well.
Real value is always available in life. Develop the bad habits, such as vengeance, denial or blame and you will never see it. Develop the right habits, conversely, and you will be one of those rare individuals on earth who has the capacity to value in everything.
Gregory Hake 
Great post, thank you.
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Love the first line of this post. What a liberating thought. I have to ask myself, why would I waste one more ounce of my energy on regret or blame…now a new option “realizing on them”. Food for thought, thanks.
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Great points – I completely agree
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George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were both resolved not to allow our country’s rebuilding process, after the respective wars, to become thwarted by the sink hole of revenge. Both were deeply affected by the mistakes in the French Revolution. Washington was saddened by the waste of the opportunity to forge ahead with the republic that was almost within reach and Lincoln saw it as a cautionary tale to be heeded and learned from. Emotions were high after both wars, thankfully there were responsible, mature leaders to keep us onward and upward. Great post.
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Well said!
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When you seek revenge for a perceived slight, you are making it clear that you have not learned from your past mistakes. In fact, you are making another mistake! Especially heinous are the times that someone makes a mistake, blames someone else for their own mistake, and then attempts revenge on the other person for something they did themselves! This is clearly not how we should be living!
Use your mistakes as an experience that you will not purposely repeat, but that you will learn from and grow from. Take responsibility where it is yours, but don’t beat yourself up over mistakes. Learn, and move forward.
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Habits are the grooves etched in our lives through repetitive behavior. It’s easy to be in a groove, and like an record player, the needle tracks the groove fairly well. If we’ve carved out a good habit, then there is less effort required for that particular situation and that’s good because we can concentrate our efforts in the many other areas that need it.
A bad habit, I can see from your writing, forces you down a non-productive track which then requires you to use all your efforts to get you out of that groove just in order to get on with your life, creatively. Its like the needle getting stuck on the record, and you must jolt the record player with a push to get it to move off of a bad groove, in order to hear the rest of the music (I’m dating myself here having been the owner of many records and phonographs!).
I know I’ve had to break bad habits because simply nothing good comes from it. It stifles the creative spark within, leaving you confined to cramped quarters where you cannot develop and mature properly, normally. Needless suffering lies in the hands of the bad habit bearer. Nature is not unreasonable, and we simply have to our part which is simply to be alert to learn the ways of life and awaken to a constructive purpose. How much energy and life is lost in seeking revenge? As history has shown many times, it can be all of it. I don’t want that, not for myself, not for anyone. Life is to darn precious and there’s enough work that needs to be done to improve conditions globally that we cannot afford to be wasteful any much longer.
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Realizing on mistakes is an attractive prospect, though at first glance might seem unlikely to yield too much. I undertook to make a short list of the possible return a person may realize on mistakes : greater resolve, greater understanding of the subject, a deeper sense of humility, and an increased compassion for others and their mistakes.
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Learning from the past still won’t change it but it does at least become useful to us. Whenever I feel like I’d like to take revenge I always remember the Chinese proverb…”when planning revenge make sure to dig two graves.” That says it all to me. I value my own life and my contribution to my family too much to throw it away on someone I obviously don’t value.
I’m glad to see you are writing more in this series, I look foward to exploring the different view points on such basic aspects of life like mistakes or individualism. We all face them but do very little to understand the construct of them, thank you!
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Mistakes are made – they have been and they will be. How they are met and utilized is indeed a huge part of the way our individual stories are told. From the tragic extremes of vengeance in all its murderous forms to the torpor of grieving acquiescence, reactions that refuse to accept responsibility destroy the fabric of life. Beyond that, such reactions are inevitably accompanied by blindness to present opportunity. On the other hand, one could accept responsibility, re-measure the bearings, and live!
How powerful, freeing and vital are thess words of truth – words for living today!
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Developing and strengthening the rights habits, and ‘breaking’ the wrong habits is something I’ve been emphasizing this summer with my children. The break in their school routines can cause some slack habits to form, much like blundering in a fog and getting off course as Jordan described. I’ve noticed in general with both children and adults how easily, for example, slang words and complaint can become a habit that opens the way for ‘harder’ attitudes and actions. Especially nowadays with the Internet and easy anonymity the world is full of Montresors. The name itself is ironic, “my treasure” in French. It does reveal where one has invested their treasure!
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