If you actually knew this for
certain, it would wholly change the way you get up and go through the day. But
on the contrary, if you think about it at all, you may feel it is very possible
you can go wrong in one way or another. No wonder so many people are reluctant
to get out of bed in the mornings.
The most we usually hope for
our day is that things will turn out not
too bad, if we are careful, lucky, and do not tempt fate by getting cocky. 'I
can't go wrong' is so patently contradicted by experience that it jibbers a
touch-wood, fingers-crossed fear of come-uppance. We are all familiar with the
gremlin inside us, or the rule of Sod's Law, who is roused by any surge of
happy confidence as if determined to prove us wrong, to pull the rug out from
under our feet and replace it with a banana skin.
When you learn that the
gremlin is you, that it is only yourself you are afraid of. and that you wrote
the self-undermining rules you live by, you can get up and meet the day without
fear. The mad woman in your attic, the alligator in your sewer, the monster you
have created are fictions. The world you see through your eyes and through the
windows of your laptop or television - yea, the great globe itself - are such
stuff as dreams are made on. In short, the reality you see, and how you
interpret it, is mediated through your mind, and you can learn to see it
differently.
What worries us about anything
going 'wrong' is not really that we are afraid of making a mistake. It is not
even that we are afraid of the consequences that might result from the mistake.
If you are playing a computer game, it is by making mistakes you learn what to
do. Like a rat exploring a maze, you try one way, and get the cheese; or you try
the wrong way, get no cheese, go back, try another way. Eventually, you know
the way and go straight to the cheese without needing to check out the blind
alleys. So helpful teachers urge us not to hesitate for fear of making
mistakes, but rather, to boldly make as many as we need, so as to distinguish what
works from what does not work.
The Course, even more helpfully,
points out that what we are really afraid of is being wrong. The word 'sin' is out of date, but the idea of it still hobbles
our minds and inhibits our actions. The concept of sin makes us feel that a
mistake is shameful. If so many stories have to be told about innovators like
Edison, who had to find 2,998 thousands of ways that would not work before
succeeding in giving us the electric light bulb, it is because in our hearts we
are not convinced. Perhaps some of us might be prepared to tolerate getting it
wrong that often, if we could be guaranteed an eventual success. But we would
still prefer the success without the pain of failure.
The point of the Edison story, though, is not that success takes a lot of
patience and that you can't have a rose garden without a great many thorns. The
point is that the so-called failures were not failures, but valid discoveries
in their own right. Most of us experience failure as frustrating: the word
originally meant 'whipping', and that's what we do, whip or beat ourselves up over
our mistakes. We consider them painful, humiliating, and discouraging. Failure does
not feel like an advance in our general understanding. It feels like a
punishment in itself for not being good enough.
When you discover at the
checkout that you have left your wallet at home, you feel a fool. When you step
in the dog mess, you feel personally degraded. You can get 19 out of 20 ticks
on a test paper, and berate yourself for the one cross. You can come to a party
for fun with friends and be mortified when you forget someone's name, or wear
the wrong shoes, or turn up a week too early or too late - the possibilities for
embarrassment are endless. These are not just mistakes, as we have judged them.
Mistakes call for correction, for doing something differently, for learning
something new. They point away from themselves and towards the cheese. But when
you make them into sins, they become part of your identity and affect your
peace of mind and the confidence of your decision-making.
So if ever you have a day
when anything or everything goes wrong, remember first that 'wrong' is a matter
of interpretation. Consider the rules you have set in your mind for how things
and people ought to be, and how you are using these to set yourself up as a
victim, or as a failure: denouncing someone as guilty, and deserving of
punishment.
Your insane laws were made to guarantee that you would
make mistakes, and give them power over you by accepting their results as your
just due (T24 IV 3)
However, if you start the day
from the viewpoint that Nothing real can
be threatened (T intr) and that The
truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything
beside it is not there (T14 II 3), it
is easier to see that you really cannot go wrong. When you are clear that
mistakes are only misunderstandings, misjudgements and blind alleys, arising
from fear, uncertainty or misinformation, then you will only want to get back
on course for the cheese, as quickly and good-humouredly as possible.
Truth will correct all errors in my mind. What can correct
illusions but the truth? And what are errors but illusions that remain unrecognized
for what they are? Where truth has entered errors disappear (W107)
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