MAKING MISTAKES | MOVING FORWARD
The Most Important Life Lesson You’ll Ever Hear
It’s about accepting mistakes and moving forward.
“Too often, we treat mistakes as a wall that blocks our path. We just don’t realize that we can climb onto that wall and be higher than we were before.”
A quote from me.
I’d like to share a story to complement this quote.
One day, I discovered that I could write answers on Quora. It was like a miracle had struck me on the top of my head.
Boy, how I was excited.
I immediately set up an account, spiced up my profile, and furiously began typing away answers.
As the views streamed in, I beamed with delight — I was impacting people’s lives!
I could demonstrate my knowledge!
I admit, it was fun.
But a few days ago, I was looking for new questions to answer when I got a notification I hadn’t seen before.
Someone had commented on one of my answers.
Oh boy!
Except there was no reason for joy — the comment pointed out that I made a big mistake in one of my answers.
The question had asked whether all veins lead to the heart.
Easy, I thought.
I quickly responded yes, wrote a summary of veins, arteries, and capillaries, and published without thought.
I was sure of my answer — that’s what I learned from textbooks, Internet resources, and teachers.
Yet I was wrong. Sort of.
As the comment indicated, I forgot about the bloody portal vein, which transports blood from various organs to the liver.
But not to the heart.
And then I panicked.
My hand started shaking as it hovered over the computer keyboard.
My fingers struggled to find any keys.
My brain froze mid-thought.
My lungs struggled for air.
I felt my heart beating a hundred times harder than usual.
I Went Full Sherlock Holmes to Prove I Wasn’t Wrong
The first thing I did was check who the comment was from.
That didn’t help — they were a doctor.
So I figured it wouldn’t be very wise to start a Quora debate with a chap who’d spent half his life in school (and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on it).
I then did a quick Google search, typing “do all veins carry blood to the heart”. Just as I thought, the answer was yes, with no mention of the portal vein.
I also did more detective investigation about the portal vein, and good ol’ Wikipedia gave me a helpful lead.
“The portal vein is not a true vein, because it conducts blood to…the liver and not directly to the heart.”
Alas. Despite having this irrefutable piece of evidence, I gave up.
It was Wikipedia, after all — the most hated web source in all of academic literature.
And I felt that my reputation was already ruined.
Then and there, I lost all motivation to answer any more questions. How could I be trusted anymore?
All I could do was delete the answer. And that’s what I did.
I closed the computer, showered, and hopped into bed — it had gotten too late in the evening.
But whatever I did, that comment continued echoing in my mind.
“Actually, it’s not correct.”
It seems that I was facing my first bout of Internet anxiety. Over a simple mistake.
The Most Important Life Lesson You’ll Ever Hear
“The greatest mistake a man can ever make is to be afraid of making one.” — Elbert Hubbard
My instinctive actions demonstrate arguably the most important life lesson you might ever hear.
Your mistakes aren’t failures. They’re valuable lessons meant to strengthen you and guide you forward through the journey of life.
So don’t treat them as failures.
In principle, it seems easy to understand.
But like always, there’s a problem: too often, we see mistakes as reasons to beat ourselves up.
We’re quick to deny the mistake and try to prove ourselves right instead. We refuse to be wrong.
And then we quit.
The thing is, mistakes are a crucial part of reality. We’re supposed to learn from them — that’s the key to self-improvement.
You may have:
- been caught trash-talking your boss
- failed an exam
- lost your house keys in a zoo
Use those mistakes to build yourself up, and not to beat yourself down.
Allow your mistakes to motivate you to become better, stronger, and smarter in the future.
The past is the past — but you can still create your future.
Treat mistakes not as big, daunting boulders, but as stepping stones. Treat them as a hill you’re meant to climb.
Because when you get to the other side, you’ll be stronger than ever.
