Let's all face that facts on one thing right now. We all make mistakes. We forget birthdays, we lose our tempers, we bomb tests, we spill water all over our friends new macbook air. And in the very moment that we realize our mistake, whether it be trivial or catastrophic, we wish wish we could undo it. Or that we didn't do it in the first place. You have a stupid conversation with someone and you say, "forget this ever happened". You get your bag of chips stuck halfway out of the vending machine and you just wish you could take back your $1.25 in dimes and go on with your life like nothing happened.
You don't rear-end a car and go, oh well. Or at least I don't. I go, OH NO! I WISH I COULD UNDO IT. I always wish I could undo that mistakes I made. Unsay the thing I said when I was mad at my boyfriend, unprocrastinate studying so that I could have time to learn the material (what was I doing on youtube for this many hours anyway?), unspill my coffee or uneat that chili dog that is quickly looking to exit me in a noisy, gassy way.
Even if they aren't mistakes, sometimes my timing is wrong (I should have studied hard and then spent four hours watching cat videos cuz at least I wouldn't be stressed). I wish I could go back in time and do it differently.
How did I develop this desire to undo everything I've done? Or, maybe, how did we develop this as a human culture? I blame inventions that allow you to undo. Fuck the Etch-A-Sketch that lets you shake away your mistakes. Damn the pencil that allows you to scrub away any silly doodles about how JRL+KP=LUV. Curse the backspace key on my computer, the key I consistently use more than any other key.
Let me draw in fat, felt tip markers. Let me doodle in sharpies. Let me pry this backspace key off my keyboard and be freed by the fear of moving on from mistakes.
Because how can you move on from mistakes, how can you recover, or rationalize your mistakes if in a blink of an eye that mistake is gone? No one knows. No one will ever know. You can deny your failings. They might as well have never happened.
But they did.
You FUCKED UP BRO.
You held down the shift bar a little too long and typed > instead of .
You didn't hold down the shift bar long enough and typed !!!!!!1111 instead of !!!!!!!!!!
You just hit that parked car. You just broke your fourth iPhone. You just yelled at your roommate. You just damn screwed up, son. There ain't an eraser for that, friend. Everyone can see, everyone knows, and you can't delete that. You can't undo anything.
You have to learn to accept mistakes. I'm not saying that when you mess up you should not care or just say fuck it all. I'm saying man up and recognize, brotha. You done effed up. See it, name it, and deal with it.
Etch-A-Sketches, pencils, backspace bars, they just delude people. It's not real. Remember what's real. Mistakes are real. Embrace them. Cuz they aren't gunna disappear.
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