I teach children these days. I always thought it was so cliché when people would talk about the wonders of children, and how they can teach you so much more about the world than you could ever imagine.
Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say children can teach adults everything about the world, but I have had a quick life lesson with one of my students. His name is Jorge. And while he’s a whiz at math, he has trouble in spelling and reading. Which is where most of my work is done. He had to put vocabulary words into a sentence and he was having trouble spelling words in the sentence. I would tell him to sound it out, or use the dictionary, because we’re not supposed to just straight out give them the answer. (At least not all of the time.) He got frustrated and gripping his pencil said to me, “Man, I always make too many mistakes!” And for some reason, without hesitation I replied to him cheerily, “Well that’s why you have an eraser.” And with that he was fine and carried on with his work no longer frustrated with making mistakes, knowing he could use his eraser and they’d be gone forever.
But when you get older, your mistakes don’t have to do with spelling “rural” or addition and subtraction, and an eraser can’t help you. When you get older your mistakes have to do with your life. Your mistakes can’t be erased, and while they may be forgotten, that is only if you’re lucky.
I guess the point of the matter is, why can’t things be more simple? Why can’t we love each other enough to have this big eraser where we all forgive and move on?
Maybe that’s too idealistic, but maybe a little idealism is what we need from time to time. And maybe getting older isn’t about trying to erase your mistakes, but it’s about being grown up enough to know when to let go of the sheet that’s marked up beyond recognition. Because maybe, just because you don’t have an eraser to permanently get rid of your mistakes, it doesn’t mean you can’t grab a brand new clean sheet of paper and just start over.
About Me
- CatCuadrado
- She thought that with a pen and paper in hand she just might be able to save the world. That maybe her words would reach someone and then they just might change their mind about suicide or something. If she could just compile all her thoughts and tell the world the life stories she knew, maybe people would want to listen. But when reality set in she knew that people didn’t read anymore, or at least not nearly enough. And people didn’t look to books for inspiration unless it becomes a huge influential hit. And the chances of her attaining that were pretty slim. She wrote anyway. Because while it would be great to save the world with a pen and paper, she had a hard enough time saving herself. So maybe if she remembered it all and wrote it all down it would start to make a more sense. If she couldn’t save the world, the least she could do was entertain it.
3 comments:
It would be great to use and erasure to take away all of our lives's little mistakes. We'd never learn from them that way though, we would only try to hide behind our mistakes and add stress to our lives. I know im only 21 years and i have the rest of my life ahead of me but i am slowly but surely learning that we must learn to acknowledge those mistakles we make and become proud of them. Idealistically we should be able to able to point out our own mistakes, show them to the world and say "I MADE THAT MISTAKE, AND IM PROUD OF IT". Say those words with such enthusiasm, and the world will never judge you.
but thats in theory. :)
Oooooh. I love this blog, Cat. Bravo! Brilliant.
-Nick
Some mistakes leave scars worth remembering. Some scars cannot and should not be erased, so I agree with Christian, but I get what you mean about forgiveness, and we'd be better for it. The key to the story is not beating yourself up for your mistakes and moving forward right? If you can accept yourself and move forward, or erase your mistakes and move forward... just don't get caught up.
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