Mistakes

I suffered a personal tragedy yesterday, and I am determined not to describe it. My goal with this post is to discuss universals; the details matter only insofar as they prompt universal truths in this post.

I made a mistake. I did something stupid with painful long-term consequences. Truth be told, there will be financial and emotional costs. The memory of what I did will pain me for the rest of my life. The pain might fade somewhat, but it will never not pain me. I screwed up. Someone I love called it relatively insignificant, reminding me of other far worse horrors in the World, but it is not insignificant to me, which is kind of the point. What matters to each of us is different, and this matters to me.

So, I feel like an idiot.

I can go over what I did again and again, agonizing over what I did under what delusions and thinking of all the ways I could or should have acted differently, but dwelling on the pain does not help me. I know this. I find that, as painful as it is, new things keep happening to take my mind out of its self-pitying rut. This is a good thing. But a part of me understands why we memorialize national tragedies: only by facing grief can we hope to set it aside. It never goes away, but we can hopefully live lives not ruled by it.

“Grief can teach even the steadiest mind to waver,” an ancient Greek said, and it is true, otherwise no one would act out of grief. It reflects our love, I know: we do not mourn that which we did not love. But of course this is what makes the loss most painful.

I have not told my family or friends what I did — not out of fear of embarrassment but out of a desire to protect them from the pain they would surely feel knowing of my suffering. This is the one way I can mitigate the damage of my mistake. It comforts me to know I am protecting them from the pain. Perhaps someday, when the mistake has been reversed to the extent it can be, I will tell the story, someday when it has safely ended as happily as possible.

Protecting them from simply feeling bad for me, helpless to do anything about it, is the only thing left I can do, but it is something I can do not to spread suffering. The mistake only affected me. I will correct it on my own.

And of course I will try to do better in the future, so as not to make the same or a comparable mistake again.