Mistakes are something that we as human do.
And there is nothing wrong with them. Make mistakes. Make a lot of them.
In fact, I don't think we should ever think to stop making mistakes, we will do it no matter what.
Only, one thing we should always do after making mistakes: make it right. Don't just fall, get on your knees, get up and heal. Learn from our mistakes. Be a better person.
As always, it doesn't just stop there. Do not think that you are free to do all the mistakes in the world, well... actually, you are free to do them, but there will be consequences you must face. Sooner or later.
Even worse are when we make mistakes and repeating them. Without getting into the process of healing and learning. We'll soon be trapped and by then it would be next to impossible to return.
Let me show a graph:
It's a very simple graph, huh? It's created by Gnumeric, one of the best spreadsheet software in the world :-)
I get acquainted with the graph during my study of the Erlang distribution several years ago (oh how time flies). This simple graph is actually a very interesting graph in telecommunication engineering as well as in this blog entry.
How so? Well, first of all, it gave us a limit. The fine pink line that is. Second, it shown us the point when we are crossing the limit, that is when the pink meets the blue. Watch the blue line for the third point. The blue line will eventually goes over the upper boundary and does not seems to have any plan of coming down. It will just fly.. up.. up... and away.
I called the area below the pink line as the area of "windows vista" (you may called it area of affordable mistakes). And above it are the "adam air" area (you may called it grounded and bankrupted area). The crossing of pink and blue is the point of time for one of those critical decisions of our life.
Sadly, not all of us are aware of our own limits. I think many do not even realize that we have such a limit. I'm here to tell that the limit does exist. It will not be at the same point for each of us. For Microsoft it may lies in USD. 5-10 billion dollar. For most of us that are not so lucky (or so unlucky?), it may be much, much, closer than we thought.
It doesn't have to be financial limits. It may not even concerns money. It may be about our way of life, our thoughts, our acts.
"I'm a brave stud, I cross limits all the time", I hear you say. Well, sure. You could cross many limits in your life, but if you
choose to cross this one, you will just not be yourself anymore. You will change to something else (SCO, anyone?). You could turn from an angel to cursed ones at a fingersnap.
Note the word
choose above? There are two other things we could also see from the graph. One is the fact that the limit is not hidden. We could learn about it, we could even work to move it another point above. Another one is that the blue line is actually giving us hints and signs of where we are going. So, we could actually choose to prevent it to cross the limit, or we could choose to stop a moment and correct ourselves.
How to solve the problem and make correct decision is an exercise we all have to meet.
