At this time
of the year, people start thinking about their mistakes and what they want to change for the coming year. It is said that to err is human, which it
certainly is, and that it is necessary and good because that way we learn from
our mistakes and know how to do it right the next time.
While I do
think this makes sense, I can’t help but wonder whether we really learn from
our mistakes. Don’t we make the same mistakes over and over again sometimes?
I have to
confess, there is one thing I always do and I know I do it wrong. I am really
bad at organizing, I am just not that structured. Every year in school I made
the same mistakes again. Instead of being prepared for the exams and studying
in time, in order not to have too much stress later on, I always
began studying very shortly before the exams, to be more precisely, the day
before they took place. Or, as my father would call it, I just lived for the
moment. In school this worked for me but at university there is so much more to
do and it is not as easy as school. Last semester at university was the first
time I did actually learn from my past mistakes and tried to avoid that stress.
I managed to be prepared for the exams and it worked really well. I have never
had bad grades but this time they were actually great. Unfortunately, the
current semester seems to be different again. I know what my mistake is and
yet it has always been hard to change it.
And think
of all the New Year resolutions people have. I bet there are thousands of
people who now have the exact same resolutions they had last year and the year before and yet they don't manage to abide by them and make the same mistakes every year.
Furthermore,
just look at history. Sometimes it seems like we repeat all our previous
mistakes, considering all the wars or any situation where people just strive
for power regardless of the results and of how insane it might be.
Unfortunately, it seems like it always takes the worst outcome to make us finally change things.
Isn’t there a saying that defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
Unfortunately, it seems like it always takes the worst outcome to make us finally change things.
Isn’t there a saying that defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
So what
does it take for us to learn from our mistakes? Do we actually really learn
from them at all?
Maybe we
don’t learn from history but only from our own mistakes.
As for me, I am now starting to write a paper for university, I don’t
want to save it for the very last day, after all. My excuse for writing this
post instead of working on my paper right now is that it has to be written in
English, so this was really just a quick warm-up, of course.
