This I Believe...

Because I believe in other people and their consciences, I believe in mistakes and our ability to rectify our errors. I believe that people grow and develop into adolescents and then adults not only by the passage of time, but also through the mistakes made during that passage. I believe that we each make the right mistakes, which lead us to where we are today.

When sitting in my room and trying to think about what I believe, I was totally clueless. I sat for a long while, carefully searching through the files in my mind about different things in which I believe. Thankfully, my family called me to come eat dinner before I myself turned into a vegetable. I walked up to the kitchen where everyone else was and there it sat – a lonely yellow and watery, swollen thing on the kitchen table. "It's a quiche," my mother enthusiastically announced. "Oh, wow," I said, both with thanks and with sheer confusion and astonishment. Unfortunately, there is no way for me to deny that I do like eggs and that I do like cheese and that I do like any combination of the two. However, I do not like watery, egg-y, cheesy mess mixed together with a couple of soggy vegetables. I sat there, though, politely eating the meal that my mother had decided to make herself after weeks of her only making processed foods from boxes; this was her first attempt in a long while to make something “out-of-the-box." However, I could hardly close my mouth after I put the puffy concoction in it. In that instant, I knew that I no longer had to think about what I believed – mistakes happen. Fortunately, mistakes are a good thing – they allow us to see what we have done incorrectly. In this instance, my mother would hopefully realize that, while she tried her hardest to make a complete meal for us, she still needs a little practice, eventually aiding her in creating a elegant four-course meal. In addition, as humans, we have full knowledge of how we should correct these actions that are displeasing to others or morally unjust.

While this issue encompasses more than a soggy quiche, any mistake is not too large or too small. From the very beginning of our lives, we “mistakenly” fall down when we try to walk, “mistakenly” wet our pants during our toddler stage, “mistakenly” forget that we aren’t supposed to be rude to adults as children, “mistakenly” forget to call our parents when we go out to a party, “mistakenly” forget to make thoughtful decisions in college, and “mistakenly” forget that there is real life even after college. However, each of these mistakes – and all of the other ones that occur every day – connect us all because each of us inevitably err. What makes each of us different, though, is how we respond to our mistakes. I believe that while people do make mistakes, these mistakes transform us into individuals.