From [1]null program:

    This week I made a mistake that ultimately enlightened me about …

  A better opening to a post or journal entry I cannot imagine.

  We all make mistakes. How many mistakes do we see & use as an
  opportunity?

  I often reflect back on a quote from [2]Frank Herbert's [3]Dune [[4]US]
  [[5]JP] (emphasis mine):

    … his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of
    all was the basic trust that he could learn. It's shocking to find
    how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more
    believe learning to be difficult … every experience carries its
    lesson.

  The entire [6]Scientific Method is predicated on the idea of making
  mistakes and learning from them.

  Example: I let myself get sucked into something this morning that
  looked like a footstool requiring my deep attention and action. By the
  end of the day the footstool turned out to be one foot of an elephant
  that required nothing more of me than a reassuring pat. Complaining,
  which hadn't seriously entered my mind until writing this post, would
  be useless to the elephant and to me.

  I learned a lot about the elephant in a very short amount of time. When
  I was spun up trying to tend to the footstool I was interacting with
  people I didn't usually communicate. I received an intense education in
  something I used to know well but with which I didn't stay current. I
  saw how some new people, now in my orbit, work and got an insight into
  their thinking. These are skilled, talented people I will do well to
  know better. And I got to work with a few folks I know, enjoy working
  with, and didn't know were in town.

  I thought about what I should do when I get a similar request, which
  happens frequently enough that I should have a process for when it
  occurs yet happens infrequently enough that I easily pushed down in my
  priority list.

  Meanwhile, I made at least a dozen or more other mistakes in the same
  12 hours. I hope to address them, the ones over which I have control,
  Real Soon Now.

  One has only so many hours in the day to make mistakes and learn from
  them.
    __________________________________________________________________

  My original entry is here: [7]People, like Emacs Lisp Lambda
  Expressions, Are Not (often) Self-Evaluating. It posted Thu, 01 Mar
  2018 12:40:51 +0000.
  Filed under: personal,

References

  1. http://nullprogram.com/blog/2018/02/22/
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)
  4. http://amzn.to/2FgkAJg
  5. https://www.amazon.co.jp/Dune-Sequence-Frank-Herbert-ebook/dp/B004KA9UXO/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1519906356&sr=8-1
  6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
  7. https://www.prjorgensen.com/?p=925