The Mistake

This revelation will come as a huge shock to many (if not most) of you ... on extremely rare occasions, I do something ... well ... I do something profoundly stupid. I know, hard to even conceive as the most remote of possibilities, eh? Alas, it's true, though ... once in a great, great, great while, I do something so dumb that I shake my own head in amazement. Take Saturday, for example ... I did one of the absolute dumbest, most stupid things I've ever done. I took Ollie for a walk late in the evening, and someone called me as we were walking. I always listen to music on my iPod as my wiener dog and I walk along the trail, and Saturday night was no exception to that rule. Normally, if my phone rings as I'm walking, I take one of the earphones out of my ear and toss it over my shoulder until I'm finished talking on the phone. But for some unknown reason, Saturday evening I removed both of the earphones and tucked them inside the pocket of my hoodie alongside my iPod. And then I never thought about the earphones or my iPod again. Until yesterday afternoon when I began to look for them when I was ready to go for a walk.

I searched for my iPod and earphones everywhere around the house and out in the garage for a good 15 or 20 minutes, and then I remembered where they were ... in the pocket of my hoodie. Which was in the washing machine. Yep, when I got home from walking on Saturday, I pulled off my hoodie and tossed it in the laundry basket with the load of darks and promptly took the basket downstairs and put the clothes in the washing machine. And turned it on. iPods don't respond well to being washed, I can tell you that because mine is now dead. Really dead. Deader than a doornail. Kaput. Finished. Terminated. And by now, I'm sure you are in complete agreement with me when I say that was one of the absolute dumbest, most stupid things I've ever done. That wasn't a mistake, friends ... that was just plain old, outright stupid of me. And because I did such a dumb thing as washing my iPod, I am now music-less on the trail. Did you get that? I am music-less on the trail because I did something dumb. 

Most of you know that I work as a senior editor for an advertising agency, and most of you know that my job is to ensure that there are no errors in any of the ads we create for our clients. When I make a mistake (and I do sometimes because I am human), it's a really big deal and can cost my company a whole, whole lot of money and damage our relationship with the client. When I take into consideration the monumental volume of copy I read each day, I really do have a very high accuracy rate when it comes to catching errors. But today, I made a mistake ... I failed to change an incorrect trademark symbol to a registered trademark symbol. Someone brought the mistake to my attention later in the day, as she should have. And normally, I absolutely want to know when I miss something that I should have caught. But today, being called out for my mistake sort of irritated me a bit ... not because I didn't want to know that I missed something as I edited the ad, but because I've been putting in some long hours lately (as have most of the folks in our office). See here's the thing, and it's the thing that's been true since the day I became an editor ... people always tell me when I make mistakes (as they should), but it's not often they make a point of telling me when I edit like a million words without making one single error. And the more I've thought about that today, the more I think there's a huge lesson I'm meant to learn ... and perhaps it's a lesson for some of you as well.

My job is to find things that are wrong ... I am paid to find what is wrong and make it right. I use a red pen to cross out what is wrong and change it to what is right. And when I return a document to the writer or the next person who needs to review the material, I don't say, "Wow! This has no errors at all! Great job!" or even "There's a couple of things wrong, but overall, it's really great stuff! And if you think about the millions of words you pen each day, that's spectacular!" I do exactly the same thing to others that irritated me when it happened to me ... I tell people what they've done wrong instead of telling them about the tremendously huge amount of things they do right. And tonight, there's a thought that I just can't get out of my head ... a thought that saddens my heart more than just a little. "Is that the way I view the people around me? Do I see what they've done wrong instead of looking for what they've done right? Do I point out their mistakes or proclaim their flaws rather than search for the good within them and understand how very valuable they are to me?"

It was dumb to wash my iPod on Saturday ... it was dumb for me to miss the trademark symbol today ... but it's about way more than doing something stupid or making a mistake at work. It's about my heart, friends ... I simply must have an accepting, loving, kind and compassionate heart that fully appreciates and recognizes the amazingly good people whom I encounter on my journey through life. That's one thing I surely need to get right ... that's one place where making a mistake is not an option.