Another angle to the whole idea of mistakes are okay, it’s alright to have a mistake, make a mistake every day: another angle that just came to me that I’m seeing today is really mistakes are funny.
They are such a fertile source of good humour.
How many jokes are based on someone doing something silly, or that turns out into a very silly thing.
And even the whole genre of fails is all about this.
So when you make a mistake, you’re generating humour.
Now, sometimes, the downsides, the ugly consequence of the mistake are far more significant than the joke that comes out of it.
But nonetheless, there’s still this humorous component that comes out of a mistake.
And this came to mind for me because I had this great plan, an ambitious and slightly silly plan that ended up failing, which was- going through the supermarket a few days ago, there was a sale on a giant purple cauliflower.
So I had the idea that I could make a cauliflower soup.
And because it was a purple cauliflower, why not make a purple soup? And wow, you know, if I could find purple potatoes, then that would really complete it.
So it just happened that this supermarket had purple potatoes right there.
So I had purple cauliflower, I had purple potatoes, and I think I picked up some so-called red onions, which are of course purple onions, and today I made my purple soup.
Put it all in the slow cooker, you know, with the garlic and some celery.
And, having seen these pictures of this royal purple, this beautiful shining purple soup, was ready to see what amazing colour would be produced.
So even this plan, it’s kind of a silly plan.
It’s kind of funny.
I mean, the idea that I want to make a purple soup, it’s kind of silly, you know, but it’s a fun thing to do.
And then, at the end, it’s come home, it’s fully cooked, add some coconut milk and blend it all together, and the colour that comes out was brown.
It was absolutely brown, like a chocolate pudding, a horrible colour for a soup.
It was not purple in the slightest.
It was a brown soup.
So this was clearly, you know, if we’re keeping track of mistake of the day, this can certainly qualify as mistake of the day, and it was clearly a fail at making purple soup.
But yet here I am having a good laugh, and I will tell this story, it will get a laugh, and especially from the people that I told about my purple soup ambitions will be especially amused to hear how it turned out.
So I share this story with the message that when we make a mistake there is often a laugh to look forward to, and I think it’s perhaps a consolation prize of many mistakes.
Of course, mistakes can get severe, and then it’s not so easy to bring out the laugh as when it’s such a a inconsequential mistake.
Or a mistake of such minor consequence.
Still it has a consequence, that I can’t enjoy a shining purple soup, and instead have a brown soup.
But the bigger the mistake, the harder it is to really appreciate the laugh, at least in terms of the bigger the bad, the bigger the bad consequences to ourselves or that we experience, then the harder it is to let the humour come through.
And yet, there’s usually something funny there.
So this is just one more piece, one more tool to help us be ready to take that step, be ready to make mistakes, and accept that when we do anything that is interesting, unusual, anything that’s new, there will always be a much less than 100% success rate.
There will be fails, and sometimes they will be funny.
And this is yet another reason to take those chances.
Success- we either succeed, or we have a good laugh at ourselves.