One single error can be corrected before it becomes a big mistake.
My mother was always critical, but she also taught me how to correct my mistakes…
Instead of making corrections for me, she would first give me time to reread the words or sentences that I had written, so that I would find my own mistakes and make my own corrections. I would reread what I had written, looking for mistakes, which I would sometimes find and rewrite correctly. However, there were times I wasn’t sure whether something was right or wrong, and this would lead me to write the word wrongly again.
Ever since I was a young child, my mother taught me that it is sometimes very difficult to spot your mistakes, and that occasionally something that is correct might appear wrong. Now that I look back on that period, I ask myself which points of my life I would erase if I had a rubber as well as the time that my mother used to give me to make my corrections.
I am going over my life, trying to find my errors. Looking back, I realise I have made many mistakes without knowing it. I must correct them…
I opened the notebook of my life and my eyes fell on the biggest mistake of all: it was the day I took my mother to an old people’s home, thinking I was doing the right thing. I took my rubber, erased this action with all my might, and a tear of joy rolled down my face.
Turning the pages of my life once more, I arrived at my other mistake, my first marriage… I thought how, if my husband and I had solved our small misunderstandings with a little bit of patience, they would not have assumed such large proportions and we would not have separated. So, I picked up the rubber once more and erased those days…
Every time I read my life’s notebook and found a new page full of errors, I wondered how it was that I had made so many. I began to erase them one by one, but sometimes it was difficult to wipe them away completely and I would end up leaving a mark on the page. I would find mistakes that resulted from previous ones, so in order to erase them I had to go back and erase others from earlier on in my past. That’s when I remembered my mother saying that you have to deal with small errors before they turn into big mistakes.
Looking deeper into the notebook of my life, I come across all those errors – big and small – that created even larger problems later, however I no longer have a rubber that will erase them… I sit alone and think about the past for hours, but there is no rubber with which to erase the mistakes of my life….
Now both my life and my notebook are reaching the end and I ask myself whether I am satisfied. I wonder why my mother didn’t teach me that life isn’t so simple, that it’s not like writing down a simple dictation, that, on the contrary, mistakes are expensive and you have to pay in order to correct them…
Today I looked back on my life and thought of all the people that have passed through it. Some of them led me to make mistakes. As a result, I regret that I made so many. It doesn’t matter any more because I don’t have enough time to relive life from the start without mistakes, to go back to the time when I was young, when my eyes would light up if I wrote down my dictation perfectly.
My gaze often wanders towards my front door, as I wait for someone to knock and enter this house of loneliness. I wait in vain… I am not sure which one of my past mistakes I am paying for so dearly with my present loneliness… If only I could give everything I have as a “fine” so that I wouldn’t have to carry this heavy weight on my shoulders any more…
Try and correct the mistakes of your life from the start, before they lead to bigger ones, because later on you will not have the time to correct them. Even if you have regrets, it will be too late to do anything.
Not all mistakes can be corrected.
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