We all make mistakes. To be able to learn, grow and flourish, we need the freedom to make mistakes and plenty of room to regroup and try again when things aren't perfect. When you're afraid of getting things wrong, it's really limiting and I see this a lot in people who want to create, express themselves, sing, dance etc, but who are afraid of being judged or mocked for messing up. It's not fair to expect yourself to get everything right first time. It's really important not to crush people who are learning - and we're all learning.
The temptation in face of a mistake is often to double down on why the other person shouldn't have a problem. This wipes out any scope for learning and improving. It often comes from a fear of consequences. When people don't feel safe owning their mistakes you can end up with unsafe situations and cultures of denial. This serves no one. When the collective focus is on learning from mistakes and sharing responsibility for problems, that gets a lot more done.
The power of the individual has a huge impact here. The more power you have, the less responsibility you can be made to take. All too often, responsibility falls on the shoulders of those least able to meet it - the way some of the media in the UK blames refugees, disabled people and those in poverty for the problems in the country, and not the policies that got us here would be a case in point. Ideally, the more power you have the more responsibility you should have, but all too often it doesn't play out that way.
It's liberating being able to say 'I messed that up,'. It's good to have the room to say why. People make honest mistakes all the time, and it tends to come down to not knowing enough, and not knowing that you didn't know. Not having the right information, tools or skills are issues. Misunderstanding can only be dealt with if you can admit it happened in the first place. You can't know everything, and it has to be ok not to know.
Then there are the body issues. Being tired, hungry, in pain, scared, hormonally challenged, emotionally impacted… there are lots of things happening in our bodies all the time that can trip us up, and we often don't notice until things go wrong. Being able to admit that opens the way to being gentler, dealing with your own needs and getting things sorted out. Again there's the power issue, because if a person is pushed to breaking point in a situation, it isn't fair to then blame them for breaking. No one is sharp or efficient at the end of a ten hour working day.
Genuine apologies are restorative to whoever has been impacted. When problems are recognised, you validate the humanity of whoever has had things go wrong for them. Conversely, if people just have to endure things going wrong and don't have their needs and issues acknowledged, that creates or reinforces power imbalances. It also helps to know if something wasn't meant personally. If someone apologises for snapping at you and says they were short tempered because they were tired and that you didn't do anything wrong, it's easy to shrug that off and not worry about it. Otherwise what can happen is that the person on the receiving end is made responsible for what the person in a bad mood does to them, and that takes a toll if it happens a lot.
When we can admit mistakes, we can be kinder to ourselves and to each other. It's a powerful foundation for identifying and dealing with injustice. When we avoid creating unjust situations in our daily lives, we're better placed to understand and tackle the bigger injustices out there. Justice is very much about the culture we collectively create. Power, responsibility and blame are all part of this, and there are everyday opportunities to explore and tackle that.
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