To quote myself, “There’s no point in having a tragedy if you can’t make it work for you! “This point of view has long contributed to my resilience and my ability to cope with and learn from the painful circumstances of my life. The recent techno glitch that happened with my newsletter the other day was far from a tragedy. In fact, if this was the worst thing that happened in any of our lives, I would take it as a blessing. Nobody was hurt and it was easily fixed.
It was merely a human error, something we all commit with regularity. What’s interesting to me is the story we make up about ourselves in the face of our errors. Of course, my designer was immediately upset upon realizing that she sent an email meant just for me to all of you. She tried to rectify the problem, but the system has no way to recall all the emails it sends. Good to know. I will now be especially careful before clicking the send button. She was totally apologetic and took full responsibility for her mistake. Given the usual high quality of her work and her honesty, I was happy it took a whole year for her to make a mistake!
What I noticed is that there were several stories that I could have made up about the error:
1) She’s incompetent and now I look really bad.
2) People will think I’m incompetent and I’ll look really bad.
3) It’s just a small mistake. A quick explanation and apology from me to all of you, and all will be fine.
4) I’m sure there will be a funny story to tell about this situation at some point.
5) I now have a topic for my next newsletter!
Fortunately, I chose numbers 3-5! And predictably, you all were kind, understanding, and supportive, just as I knew you would be! One of you even reminded me that it was okay to be human and make mistakes!
But what happens when the mistake really has caused harm and we cannot simply turn it into a useful learning experience? What story allows us to remain in relationship with what we’ve done without either defending ourselves or collapsing into I am a terrible person?
Understanding why we did something is important AND doesn’t erase the consequences of our mistake. This is the moment when blame and shame can begin to author our stories, turning I did something harmful into I am a terrible person.
Lingering allows curiosity to come into play and thus frees up possibilities that wouldn’t necessarily be imaginable in the absence of the mistake.
Once you’ve lingered and have entertained new perspectives, ReStorying becomes possible. As I indicated above, I could have chosen either of the first two stories and spent a significant amount of time suffering. However, I took a risk and trusted you all, thereby dancing between the three final stories.
As some of you know, I love to play with words. Looking at the word “error”, we could divide it into two syllables: err and or. That led me to these powerful questions:
Err or?
What if the pause between err and or is the important part?
I made an error. Or…?
What else might this mean?
What else might be true?
What else might I discover?
And, what if an error is an opportunity to linger rather than to create a premature closure that robs us of connection, curiosity, and creativity?