Mistakes, I've made a few

I don't even know where to start, so for now, I think I'll just do some inner thinking and finish this later. I just put this here to kick start my brain every time I see this so that I will write what I mean to say. Till then, here's to regrets. Clink!

12/29/07
Here I am, back again. I think I'll just leave what is written above alone for now. No, I think I'll just leave it there for good. I talked about choices and changes before. About how we make them, for the better of for the worse in our lives. It is true. We do that. At the time, the good ones seem good, the bad seem bad, and who is to say otherwise? But when the good ones turn out bad after all, or the bad ones appear to be good, that's when confusion sets in.

I don't make mistakes. I do what I do and it is good. Now and then I make wrong decisions that I later regret. That doesn't make it a mistake. Dictionary.com describes mistake as: An error or fault resulting from defective judgment, deficient knowledge, or carelessness. My judgment is not defective, my knowledge is not deficient, nor am I careless. When I am faced with a decision, I take into consideration all the angles I can think about. I try to learn all I can about the choice before making it. And by doing these things before making a decision, I take care not to make the wrong choice. That doesn't mean that I am above being wrong. No, it only means that I am human, and humans are rife with regrets and wrongs.

Another definition of "mistake" is : an unintentional error or an erroneous belief. Now if I look at it that way, well then I do make mistakes. An error that is unintentional or a belief that is erroneous sounds a lot better than intentionally doing something wrong. I was at a friend's house last night, for supper and visitation. Oh, what a Friday night it was! After supper, we sat down in the living room and talked a little, but then NBC's To Catch A Predator came on. That show is full of people who make wrong choices, i.e., mistakes. Who in their right mind would think that traveling many hours to meet a person you met online, who led you to believe they were only a mere 13 years old, and to go to meet them for a night of sexual perversion would be the right choice to make? All of the men who were featured on the show spent a good amount of time chatting online with this "teen" (who in actuality, was either a man or woman at a computer) and sent pictures of their privates and other sexual perversities to someone they thought was only 13 years old! And when they were outed by the host of the show, they immediately started stammering with excuses..."I wasn't going to do anything bad, I made a mistake, I wasn't thinking clearly...". Damn right they weren't thinking straight. But they intentionally did something wrong. There is no way that they could have thought for one moment that what they were thinking of doing, what choice they made, was the right one.

Mistakes, I've made a few. I admit that now. After all, I'm only this hairy, pink skinned, goo-filled, bone structured being with a brain that sometimes gets ruled out by a nether appendage. Errors in judgment follow, unintentional side effects may include pain, loneliness, loss of loved ones, a new set of problems, and a touch of regret. But as long as I know that I don't go into the decision making process without a lot of study and heartfelt knowledge of what the end result could be, I know that I am doing my best to make the right choice, to keep the losses to a minimum, and to make my brain know that I am doing what I think is right.

I am making the right decisions, for the right reasons, all on my own. This I do believe.