Even the wise man makes mistakes

A Confucian proverb has been with me since I first heard it from a history lecturer at University. "While you do not know life, how can you know death?" The lecturer was emphasising the importance of studying history so that we could learn. He applied it in passing to our own life stories: learn by your mistakes. I am not sure if it was the same lecturer who once quoted another Chinese proverb: 'Even the wise man makes mistakes. Even the fool is sometimes right'.

These proverbs, my story, the world's history are all part of our challenge, tools for our education, insights in to life. They are a means to ponder and to form oneself: almost as if seeking wisdom from one's own experience and the experiences of others.

With wisdom there is the better chance to live correctly, chose sensibly, act appropriately and think clearly. Wisdom flows from knowledge and study amongst other sources.

This morning I woke for a few minutes at 5am. Into my head came the song of Edith Piaf, 'Je ne regretted rien'. I am a great admirer of that woman, her songs, her voice, her feisty attitude and I am even a learner from her life story.

As a teenager and on in to adult life I too regretted nothing. Yes, many times I did foolish, wrong, hurtful and unconsidered things, even illegal and anti social and dishonourable.

Yet I felt I was who I was, made my own choices (even wrong ones) which contributed to who I was. And it was from there, that person in that present moment that I was to move on, to change, to live. I would be choosing. I would be choosing my life so why should I regret but rather just move on.

I think the Piaf song this morning rose from my subconscious. I had heard a radio programme on mental health and heard a man traumatised by his failures, his regrets and the many opportunities he had missed. 

How does one know life if one has not lived? How do we challenge ourselves, the boundaries of life unless we take risks?

If we take risks we may not only fail but regret what we have done. Yet we need to experience for the sake of living not for its own sake.

These are some of my musings today, so far. When I muse and try to clarify my thoughts I often dip in to my favourite authors. Rumi is one of those and one of his poems, called, 'The long string' has these lines:

" A holy man does sometimes fall,

   but by that tribulation, he or she ascends, 

   escapes many illusions, escapes

   conventional religion, escapes

    being so bound to phenomena.

   Think of how PHENOMENAL come trooping

    out of the desert of non-existence

    into this materiality. "

This echoes Confucius, this even is echoed by Piaf, my musings echo these too.

I have failed, fallen, am fallible and I am frail, fragile and feeble but; I am who I am now.

So now is the opportunity to know life and, as with Confucius, therefore to know death: the latter is beholden to the former, the former to the latter.

If I live a good examined life - I will die a good examined death.

That I will not regret.

#rumi #edithpiaf #confucius #phenomenal #risks #livelife #wisdom