The Greatest Mistake You Can Make…

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one."

(often attributed to Elbert Hubbard)

Though I’m not sure who is responsible for forming this exact statement, and I'm sure many throughout history have pointed out this fear, but I have my high school classmates to thank for knowing it, as we chose these words for our graduation. Of course I have always liked it, and I always knew it applied to my life, but it always remained abstract. I was never quite sure how to apply it to my life, nor did I know how badly I needed to or why it was so difficult. I can almost laugh at the nonsensical fears that it speaks of, yet they haunt me like ghosts sometimes. I’m becoming aware right now of the various ways that this fear controls my actions, but I also see it with a little more depth and a little more hope.

The fear, I have found, flows directly from an attitude of perfectionism, which thrives in our culture in the States. I’m not trying to play the victim game, say it’s not my fault and there’s nothing I can do about it. But on a certain level, we do not choose the culture we are raised in, and it inevitably affects us ("independence" is unrealistic in this regard). 

Learning a new way of life, especially try to speak another language, has really required me to confront this. For this I'm thankful to be where I am. I'll share some interior activities going on in my life. Not activities specific to Perú, just happening to me while I'm in Perú :) 

Perfectionsim

When I say perfectionism, I don’t mean the idea of “striving” to be perfect, in the same way as “striving” for holiness. I mean demanding and expecting perfection, and rejecting and even fearing anything less (like mistakes). Perhaps you get what I mean, but I know I didn’t get it the first time I heard it. In any case, I’ll share the things I’m beginning to see. 

The first problem is obvious: its unrealistic. How could you be so prideful to think you will never make a mistake in life? That is absurd, and I think its necessary to laugh at ourselves a little bit when we catch ourselves thinking this.

The second is also pretty simple: who ever said making a mistake is a negative thing in itself? It’s as if we have this view that holiness equals not making mistakes. I think it’s easy to look back and find our most intense learning experiences in our mistakes. Actually, that is the key. We have the responsibility to learn from our mistakes. In that way, making a mistake is actually a positive experience. For me it has been important to see opportunity in my shortcomings. Opportunity to learn, opportunity for patience, opportunity for accept myself where I’m at.

There are a few more problems that are perhaps more at the root of the fear. A basic human pursuit is happiness, and so naturally we fear what we don’t think will make us happy, and we purse what we think will make us happy (even in a superficial way). Simple. So, why do I fear making mistakes? Because success will make me happy. I look back on my life at all the ways I’ve tried to be successful: getting good grades, practicing hard at sports, doing a job right on the farm, even in trying to lead people to God. Sure, it is gratifying when you’ve worked hard for something, and it should be. And to be clear, I don’t mean to say that success is not an evil thing; it is quite good. But God never asked anyone to be successful, only to be faithful. And there is a reason for that: because success does not equal happiness. I think it’s obvious enough when you look at the miserable lives some of the most successful people that have lived. It is the great lie disguised as the American dream: If I graduate college, get a good job, a nice house, and a family and 2-3 kids, if I do so successfully, I will be happy. This lie will pull us into a perfectionism that eats us alive.  

Finally, what I have found to be the really the source of the fear, the underlying problem of perfectionism: it is a matter of identity. It is believing that my value corresponds to my accomplishments and my shortcomings. When I complete some task successfully, I think well of myself. When I mess something up, I think less of myself. I find it hard to simply accept and value myself as I am. As I mentioned earlier, its absurd to think I will never make a mistake. And the true is that who I am will make mistakes. Because I fear making mistakes, I won’t accept who I am here and now, I won’t accept my limits, but rather I create an ideal image of myself that never messes up, and I will only accept myself as that person (which is not me). If that’s a little confusing, perhaps you can at least see the vanity in it all.

Perhaps an example from my childhood: I would always imagine myself making amazing receptions in sideline football, or breaking tackle after tackle, make the perfect cuts, and everyone would be impressed and know what I’m capable of, because I was capable of this. But, the truth is, the good plays I made could have been more perfect, and there were always some bad plays. It was frustrating because it was never the perfection I imagined. I think I carried this with me through high school sports.

Anyways, you can see there is an endless frustration with myself, an endless sources of fears, and they will never be put to rest until I accept and value who I am, not who I want to be.

The only questions I can really bring myself back to, then, are: Who am I? Where does my value come from? Am I, simply me, in myself, aside from my performance, significant? When did I become something/someone valuable?

They are serious questions, and I think what is important is not necessarily being able to give the answer on the spot, but knowing that these are the most important questions of my life and I must give everything I have to answer them. We all find the longing within ourselves to know ourselves, and to be significant, to matter, to be valuable. The mistake is to not follow these longings. 

For Further Reflection.. 

Perhaps I will start a tradition of attaching songs to my reflections. At least I will for this one. At your own leisure, Casting Crowns proposes an answer to the previous questions: 

YouTube.com - Casting Crowns - Who am I?

A practical exercise I've been doing: 

Let others see my mistakes. Stop trying to hide them. It keeps me honest with myself. 

For the year of faith, we had an "intellectual soccer" competition with all the parish centers in Peru. Basically you form
a team of 6 guys and study the documents proposed and be prepared to answer questions from them. We used a minor
Catechism prepared by the diocese, along with Porta Fidei and Fidei Depositum. Basically, you gott know the faith.
In Spanish :) Our team was from 4 different countries (US, Australia, Philippines, Peru). 

We had a ping pong tournament in the Parish Center. Brought
back some good memories of playing with my dad back in the day.