Aging: Thinking About My Mistakes...

 I’m discovering that as I get older, I view my mistakes very differently.

Maybe it’s because I had perfectionist tendencies, but as I grew up, I was always pretty tough on myself if I messed up. And I’m not talking major mistakes –just the slip-ups: the silly, day-to-day blunders that seem to be the sprinkles on my cupcake of life.

For example, when a youngster, if I dropped, broke, or spilt something, I immediately felt this sense of intense frustration bordering on anger. I felt it keenly (no doubt more than was necessary) and a smidge dramatically, probably followed with thoughts like, “Will I ever get life right?”

Now when I error, I often do something I wouldn’t have dreamed of years ago: I laugh. And I find others often laugh at their mistakes too.

One of my good friends was shopping on a website via her phone, making decisions, thinking ahead (as any smart gal does), when she suddenly dropped her phone. In her dance to grab it, she pushed the screen and it became unexpectedly aglow with bright confetti and a large font that read: “THANK YOU FOR YOUR ORDER!”. She was giggling as she recalled the experience, obviously finding it comical that of all the places on her screen to touch, her finger landed on the tiny “place order” button.  

I couldn’t help but notice how carefree she was about it. She’d chuckled, checked the order to make sure it didn’t contain unwanted items and went on with her day. And we laughed together over this mishap. My younger self would be horrified.

I think back to my earlier years and even into my twenties, when an online shopping blunder like that would have devastated me. Now, I know to just check the order or immediately cancel, then verify it with my credit card charges later.
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I’ve navigated online shopping long enough that I’m familiar with the ins and outs of it, and I can confidently say that I possess similar competency in many other facets of life. All of which took time and experience which – I hardly need to point out – is a fantastic benefit of aging; it allows episodes in my life that I used to find so dismaying to ironically morph into something I can laugh about.