March 9, 2007

• “Everyone Makes Mistakes…Or Do They?” for the Internet Island

  

  This is my topic entry for the Internet Island Blogring Topic Post #23. “Everyone Makes Mistakes….Or Do They?” Other responses to the topic can be found on the Topic Post for the subject on the Internet Island Blogsite.

  “Those who realize they are imperfect human beings and respond to mistakes with patience, understanding, and guidance will learn from their mistakes and those of others.  Those who respond with harsh words, criticism, and anger will likely be seen as arrogant, which I believe is an adequate description of those who fail to realize they are imperfect human beings.”  Marie (Building_A_Mystery)
   
  “Mistakes mistakes,
  Unintentional breaks,
  Or a case of betting on too high stakes.
  When one is mistaken then one is mistook,
  Invariably we seldom get a second look…”  Adrian (adriansluzky)
   
  “…as a direct result of those “mistakes” I have made, I have been molded into the person I am today.
  You can’t cry over spilled milk….but you can clean it up. (And maybe use a sippy cup next time)”  Kellie (prettynosyarentu)

  “Personally, I am not entirely certain mistakes exist.” Brianne (briannebrucker)

  “One mistake you can make after making a mistake is not to learn from it.”  Emily (BoureeMusique)

  “Each mistake is a stepping stone on the road of tomorrow…” Mo (davesshelterfromthestorm)

  I was watching an episode of the hit television series “Grey’s Anatomy” a few weeks ago. One of the characters in the medical drama, an intern named George, recently got married, and his friend Izzy, another intern, expressed her opinion that she thought it was a great mistake that he had gotten married. Marriage is a revered institution which couples two people, supposedly, for life. I’m sure most longtime married couples believe that “till death” won’t even be the parting. Yet some couples do make “the mistake” of marrying perhaps too early in their relationship, and their lives aren’t as fulfilling as they could be. Maybe their lives would even be less fulfilling alone.

  In any case, the conversation on the television show started me thinking about the early 90s, when I declared to my assembled friends at “the Frat House” where I lived with Bob and Joel,  that I had fallen in love with my workmate Pat and would soon be moving out to room with her and her children. To a fault, everyone I knew told me this was a “mistake”. In retrospect, since the relationship ended badly after three years, perhaps it was indeed a “mistake” to take the plunge, but I had never been in a live-in relationship and I did love the woman. I tend only to “remember the good times” when thinking about that period in my life, but whose to say whether or not I would be a better or worse person if I hadn’t made the “mistake” of beginning that relationship.

  It’s too early in the plotline of the televsion show “Grey’s Anatomy” to ascertain whether or not the writers will side with George (and his “mistaken” marriage) or with Izzy, in relating whether or not the decision he made was, in fact, a mistake or not. The show is filled with misbegotten relationships, so it would be rather neat if George and Callie are allowed to have one that is healthy.

  I purposefully waited till some of the other Islanders wrote their enties before penning this one. As the quotes at the top of this entry prove, which were all culled from various Islander topic entries on the subject, even those who acknowledge the existence of mistakes in their lives have learned from them, and it seems that perhaps mistakes are natural occurences in life.

  First of all , in order for a mistake to be made, a standard has to be set, which would then be broken. Who sets the standard? Aye, there’s the rub. In a society, there are laws. When playing a game, there are rules. In a religion, there are dogmas. In a family, there are guidelines. In a business, there are standards and practices. Everywhere there are signposts which tell us what we are supposed to do and how we are supposed to act. When we travel outside of these standards and practices, we are “mistaken” in our judgement, and we are acting “wrongly”. How “wrongly” we act, and how “large” the mistake is perceived to be are largely set by the standards and rules we break by making the mistake. Walking under a ladder on Friday the 13th might only be a mistake if a bucket of paint falls on your head. Piloting an aircraft while under the influence of alcohol, which could endanger any number of people if you crash and burn is certainly a much greater mistake.

  I work in the electrical business. Electricity has a certain set of physical “rules”. It always acts in the same way. When these rules are broken, terrrible things can happen, including electrocution, fire, and possibly death for anyone in the way of the “fault”. I’m an electrical designer. I create, sometimes from nothing more than a customer’s pipe dream, a control system to operate some kind of machine. The machine itself can be deadly, like a punch press, and the control system can become a deadly liability if, for instance, it causes a fire on a ship on the high seas. In almost 20 years of designing and building control panels, there haven’t been too many “mistakes’ in the field, and I believe I do an excellent job, and have developed a checks and balances system which does not alllow too many “mistakes” to occur, and those that do “slip through the cracks” are not deadly.

  A few years back, however, our CEO hired a semi retired panel builder, about 15 years my senior, to “test” our control panels prior to their shipment, because I was building up the business so quickly that there were far too many panels for me to test myself. Alex was an intelligent guy, but his position, which was created to alleviate my time doing that particular task, really wasn’t enough to do full time. Our industry has a lot of “peaks and valleys” and sometimes it can be extremely busy, followed  by a period of inactivity. Alex would test a panel, and find numerous “mistakes”. Some of these involved moving componentry around. Since electricity always takes the path of least resistance, one of the prime directives involved in electrical design is to make sure components are not placed where one could cause another to blow up or catch fire when it is energized. Sometimes Alex would suggest movement of a component so it was “safer”. Every time a change is made in a manufactured product, documentation, which I supply, has to be revised, so the “mistake” is not made the next time the panel is built. Alex made the change, and I dutifully recorded the revision. Next time the panel was built,  six or so months later, Alex sent the product back to assembly with a not to move the same component back to it’s original position. I sometimes thought he was playing games. He would have us move the item six inches to the left, then back to where it was, and then four inches to the right. After numerous “revisions” I called him on this, and eventually he admitted that he was arbitrarily “experimenting” with the positioning of the component. It really didn’t matter whether or not it was moved in the first place.

  Who sets the standards? One of the gals who used to work for the company used to say to me. “You NEVER make a mistake.” This was meant to be sarcastic, because I’m one of those anal retentive types who like to see everything “in it’s place” and I get extremely upset when anything is “out of place” whether I’m the one making the misake or not. “I don’t LIKE to make mistakes” I would tell the gal. This has always been my mantra. In anything I do, I want to make the accomplishment rather quickly, and make it seem effortless, but I never want anyone to “see the gears move”. I would much rather someone give me an assignment, and let me do the experimentation, including making mistakes and learning from them, and then “present” the finsihed product or report, hopefully in such a short time that people will scratch their heads and wonder “how did he do that?”

  In the real world, this seldom happens, and since I’m in a position where I design things that don’t exist yet, a lot of the “managers” will ask lots of questions about process  which I find incredibly nervous wracking to try to deal with, usually at the behest of a customer complaint that something isn’t being done quick enough. In an industry where most customers don’t know what they want except that they needed it yesterday, this can become quite daunting, and is possibly what causes me to have gained a reputation of always being upset all the time.

  As the gal at work used to say, I never make a mistake. Or at least I try not to make them. I can honestly say I’ve never made the same mistake three times. For instance, at work we’ve been discussing motorcycle wrecks a lot the past couple of days because a co worker’s brother was killed in a motorcycle wreck on the freeway yesterday morning. I used to ride motorcycles, but after I was in two wrecks, I stopped riding. I sometimes get the urge to pilot a two wheeled vehicle again, but common sense tells me I cheated death twice, and the “third strike” could very well be my last and I’d be “struck out” in the ballgame of life.

  Conclusion? We all make mistakes. This is a truism. Some are minor. Some are merely lessons to be learned, and the final one is always fatal. Methinks the more we learn, the less we make. Sometimes the managers who write and rewrite the rules are the major reasons for a lot of the mistakes, but humankind is really “making it up as we go along”, and we always have done so. Because of this, the concept of the “mistake” will never really go away.

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  THIS JUST IN: I just noticed at the top of my editing screen that the amount of blogrings one can join has been increased considerably. Check it out HERE.  Classic subscribers can be a member of 20 rings, and premium subscribers 30. The amount was only 8 before, so this is a welcome change. Now if only the powers that be at Xanga would let premium subscribers create as many blogs as they want on their account and “toggle” between them on a “dashboard” like on Blogger, I would be incredibly happy. I’ve always abhored the limit of eight blogring memberships, so that is one “mistake” that Xanga has corrected. Now if only I could see the banner at the top of the Internet Island blogsite disappear and have it “added” to my already paid for premium account, then I would think Xanga makes lots less mistakes. MFN.

  • 10:30 am
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