Old Enough to Know Better, Too Young to Care

Last week I received a message from a person who has blessed my life immensely and has become one of my very best friends (the kind who you spend a few hours with and think What just happened?! Where did the time go?!) Anyway, this message was heartbreaking. My friend had made a series of choices (turned mistakes) that changed their life for the worse. Lost everything. Gone. Done. You get the idea! To say this was the pitts would be the understatement of the year! This had me reflect on my own decisions and the mistakes we make in life.

There are four things I am told about mistakes:

1. We should always learn from them.

2. Many times we run from them.

3. Sometimes we have every intention of making the same mistake twice.

4, According to Carrie Bradshaw, they make our fate.

The problem is that mistakes are to life as junk food is to a diet. You don’t want to eat it, yet you justify when you do. For example, Miss P and I splurged on baking everything under the sun. Consequently, sleep became a luxury since we were on such a sugar rush and sick to our stomachs at the same time. So we agreed to go on a strict diet until this coming Saturday. We named it “the Caveman” since we are only eating things that are not manmade (fruits, veggies, etc). Key words until next Saturday--- when we would splurge again. I can’t help but to ask, “Why do we do this to ourselves?”

People make mistakes daily: credit card mistakes, first date mistakes, home buying mistakes, dieting mistakes,etc. Perhaps it’s similar to the part of What Not To Wear when the “chosen one” is ready to get the $5,000 gift card, but not ready to let go of their old, awful wardrobe. From an outsider, there is no hesitation… Drab to Fab .. Sign me up!

But I find myself doing the same thing, knowing with my whole heart something is a mistake and fully preparing myself to do it anyway.

Even something as juvenile as wearing this pair of red, fabulous, BCBG heels right out of the 2008 Fall Paris Collection. They are uncomfortable, tight, and create the most painful blisters on my heels, but they are SO cute. I mean really, they could potentially stop traffic on Park Avenue! Every now and then I get the urge to wear them fully aware of the pain I will endure the next day and voluntarily choosing to give myself a blister. Definition of Not the sharpest barb on the wire…

I would hope to think that we really learn from all our mistakes, and that we would never run. I would also hope that the math concept when you multiply a double negative it converts into a positive can be applied to my mistakes, but unfortunately I am certain two mistakes don’t create less of a mess.

Why are we so enticed by red tape? red flags? And red shoes?

You know, maybe red shoes are in fact the answer and not the problem, no, Max Azria didn’t come save the day… I am talking about learning from FAMOUS red shoes… the sparkly ones that when clicked three times will take you back home… I choose to think of mistakes as the individual yellow bricks that somehow lead us to our Emerald City… Rest assured if they made red sparkly shoes for men, I would buy my friend a pair as a reminder than no matter how mistakes we make, we should ALWAYS put our best foot forward.

Eventually, we will end up at our appropriate destination even if its back where we started from—before we indulged in way too much cake, before we walked a mile in red shoes, before Dorothy ended up in Munchkin Land…

I might not be old enough to correctly assess the best decision for my life every time, but I will never be too young to care.