By Jim Nichols

The winter Olympics are on television right now and, as usual, they are spectacular in multiple aspects. Strength, skill, and technique abound, as does courage. Can you imagine how many times each of those athletes has fallen during practice? And not just fallen but fallen on ice? Ice is hard.

Hold those thoughts about making mistakes and falling for a few more paragraphs.

It does not officially qualify as déjà vu, but it seems to be in the same category. Do you ever have an experience (or hear or read something) on a day and then hear or read the same thought on the next day? This is something that you do not normally recall, but for two successive days the same concept passes through your mind. What is occurring there? Why did my mind call up that topic or incident twice when it has not occurred to me for, perhaps, years?

Some have suggested that this is an indication of the enchantment of the world, that there are forces outside our logic that are functioning. For followers of God, we can attribute it to one of the actions of that version of the spiritual world. 

My translation of this situation is that such “repeat thoughts” are important communications to us/me and that they merit our attention.

Recently I had an experience in this area; it dealt with science.

Science is an accurate example of the concept of expecting to make mistakes because there is no way to avoid it. You have a hypothesis, make a prediction, design an experiment, collect data, and determine if the data support your hypothesis. If the data do not seem to support it, you suspect that there was a mistake somewhere and you begin looking for the mistake spot.

Here is the scenario for illustration:

1. A science friend is not teaching any classes this semester because she is on what in academia is called “faculty renewal leave.” This is an extended period of time during which a professor is relieved of normal responsibilities and allowed time of be scientifically creative, that is, to do science research.

When asked how it was going she replied, “It is great to be free to make mistakes.”

That language is important because it tells the truth about making mistakes; they have a true purpose.

The same idea surfaced during an interview for a faculty position.

2. When asked about goals for her prospective students, the candidate replied “I want to teach students to make mistakes and profit from them. They need to embrace them as learning opportunities.” 

These two encounters occurred on successive days last week. I heard the same message twice: pay attention to the positives of mistakes. 

Each of us grew up in an educational system that taught us to be careful; it was considered a negative to make mistakes. For students who were more creative, this was a problem because creativity often leads to mistakes. My hunch is that many of you readers have felt your creativity squelched because you were hesitant to take a chance on making mistakes—and making mistakes was inherently negative.

The two back-to-back instances mentioned above were a clear reminder to me to consider mistakes in a more positive light. 

Interestingly, increasing age changes one’s perception of mistakes. Perhaps because we have had more years to accumulate them, their importance seems to be diminishing with time. Specifically, the older I get, the more tolerant I get with mistakes, my own and those of others. Do my mistakes affect God’s love or care for me? You and I do not lead 100% correct lives, nor must we strive for it.

At the conclusion of my work at the keyboard here, I will run a spell check and grammar check and try to correct errors that appear. I have been trained to do that, but that may be human caution that is unnecessary. You could read past my errors and still understand me.

Perhaps I will leave a couple of errors uncorrected—can you find them?

Jim Nichols is a retired Abilene Christian University biology professor and current hospital chaplain