The Right Answer

"How many wrong did you get on the test?" That is the question that most will hear in academia from kindergarten through college. It's not so much what you learned that is emphasized; the proximity to perfection and no mistakes is essential. I run into more people driving themselves crazy and attempting to reach an arbitrary and artificial goal of perfection. “Never make any mistakes,” “never show any blemishes or wrinkles,” “never admit that you don’t know,” and “never let them see you sweat” are the mantras of our time.

But all of this comes with a considerable price. If everyone is afraid to make mistakes, then there are fewer and fewer risks that are taken. Heaven forbid that something new that we try or attempt should fail. Yet it is failure that teaches; mistakes lead to something new. The microwave oven, penicillin, and rubber vulcanization were found by mistake. Had these individuals learned about the grading system or that errors are unacceptable, there may have been fewer conveniences.

However, the most significant loss is the ability to accept and perceive fate and destiny. Numerous people who get fired from jobs will say it was the best thing for them. They wouldn’t have moved on to what they wanted to do without being fired. The mistaken book given to an individual is the book that set them on their course and toward their bliss. The mistaken identity that forces individuals to look at themselves to discover who they are is also not uncommon. Take, for example, Alfred Nobel, who read his obituary in the newspaper and didn’t only want to be known as the dynamite king, and thus established the Nobel Prize for Peace and other fields. Were these all by mistakes, all failures, or were they successes? The future holds the keys to our lives. We must determine if we can accept the out-of-place, the wrong answer and find ourselves in a place of harmony with the universe that is bigger than someone else’s or some institution’s perception of a correct answer.