Whose Mistake Is It?

Dear Boo (and Bubble),

I am remembering what fun we had weekend before last in West Virginia camping at the Watoga State Park.  We surely don’t need any specific reason to get together, but this trip was precipitated by your request to find a place to do some fishing.  You wanted to test out your birthday presents from Captain, Meemaw, Aunt Bee and Uncle Drew—a rod, reel and assorted gems of irresistible attraction stashed in your double-drawer tackle box.

Regardless of the fact that you successfully tied your very first hook onto the line…and mastered the mechanics of casting…and snapped a nightcrawler in half for the first time…and figured out how to cut an incessant tangle free by using car keys…it was a somewhat frustrating time for you.  I can’t blame that on the fact that you only caught two fish.  Simply put, you had too many “advisors”—that would be me, Captain and your mom. Sunday morning, as you made your way out onto the rocks at the edge of the lake spillway, you could hardly do anything for the chorus of opinions coming from us, sitting on the bank telling you to—cast to a different spot; use some other casting technique; try another kind of bait; be patient.  

Finally, it got to the point where you felt compelled to yell, not just at us, but to the entire universe: “Is it okay if I make a mistake?”

Oh, my goodness!  What an important, soul-searching question--one that has been asked by every living human at some time or another.  Great writers, philosophers, theologians and scientists have addressed the issue in quote after quote.

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
― Albert Einstein

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”
― Mahatma Ghandi

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
— Elbert Hubbard

Even your great granddaddy Schaefer wrote about it in one of his editorials – “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t’ try.”

I must tell you, though, that your great, great, great, great Grandfather Joseph Benson Cottrell might just have hit the nail on the head by putting a slightly different spin on the situation.  In the late 1800’s, he wrote the following.   I think your “advisors” might want to take heed.

“I am not given to advising people, but I’d venture just this to any boy: Don’t be the first born, or the second.  You’ll be systemized—regulated—if you are.  The children that are your parents will make up on you for all the unwisdom of your grandparents.

System! Regularity! Uniformity! Oh, yes!  Nothing like strict discipline over a boy!  Will the world never rightly apprehend that the true philosophy of human government is to insure self-government. 

It is needful, therefore, rather to inspire a boy, and to appeal to that ultimate of character which may be termed honor, than to break in upon his own individual method and prescribe to him the details of his actions.

The qualification for thus inspiring is—ultimate, clean, benevolent disinterestedness on the part of the parent or guardian.

So…Boo…I want to apologize for my past transgressions of "breaking in upon your individual method."  I promise in the future to practice a little more "disinterestedness!"