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I have found the best way to take away the power of a mistake is to laugh at it. If that idea shocks you, all I can is that it shocked me until I tried it and that was less than ten years ago. Since then I have enjoyed it and it has given me perspective on those mistakes – something solemnity never did. I think that’s why Tallulah Bankhead said, “If I had my life to live again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.” She had come to see that her mistakes were not as bad as she thought when she made them. She had come to see the learning that came from them. She had even realized that some of them were actually inevitable. I have come to see that about half the people never feel any remorse for their mistakes and the other half beat themselves the rest of their lives. They sit in sackcloth and ashes and scratch themselves with old rough cinders. They weep, wail and throw sand in the air. They rub their nose on the mourner’s bench over and over until they look like Santa’s Rudolph. I was one of the sackcloth dudes. I was a Rudolph. And all that weeping and wailing and snatching out of teeth never did me an ounce of good. I kept on making mistakes. Maybe I got to enjoying scratching my guilt itch with that old rough cinder. Maybe I got to liking the attention I got when I described them in morbid detail. Somewhere I had developed this idea that mistakes are something to take seriously, something to continually repent over. We grow where our consciousness goes. If our consciousness continually goes to mistakes, it conditions us to make more mistakes. If it takes us into pointless guilt over and over, we remain paralyzed by guilt. Who can do good from an attitude of guilt? You may be thinking, “Aren’t we supposed to repent of our sins?” Yes, but how many times? The Bible says he casts our sins into the sea and as far as the east is from the west. Apparently, God wants no more to do with our sins once we take them to Him. He flings them away and buries them in the depths of the sea only to see us swimming half way across the ocean to find them and drag them back so we can be serious about them a little longer. How would you feel if one of your children sincerely said, “Mother I lied to you. Please forgive me!” and you said, “I am glad you were strong enough and honest enough to admit it and I do forgive you.” Then day after day, the child came back and apologized. It would hurt you that your child disbelieved in your forgiveness and had such limited concept of your parental love. Now you can see how God must feel about us Rudolphs and lovers of sackcloth and ashes. The word “repent” in the language of the Bible meant, “to change your mind.” See your mistake, change your mind and decide to live without that kind of mistake, and move on. Somewhere I saw the definition of “sin” as “self-inflicted nonsense.” That’s exactly what it usually is. I started smoking at 13. If I had my life to live over, I would start at 5 so I could quit that self-inflicted nonsense sooner and live more smoke-free, non-addicted years. One thing that makes me laugh at my mistakes, including several failed marriages, is looking back at what a turkey I was at the times I made those decisions. I was not aware of my turkeyness in being hormonally driven or subject to big delusions with little thought. I have mercy on that silly guy who walked around in my skin at those times. And my mercy makes me laugh.
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