Saturday, November 10, 2012

30 Days of Thanksgiving ~ Day 10

I am thankful for mistakes.

I always hear people say that they wish they could do something over again. To avoid pain, or fix something they did wrong, or just to get a second chance. And I have to admit, I used to be one of these people, who wants a re-do every time something goes wrong. But now I feel differently. I have realized that all the mistakes we make, and all the hard things we go through, and all the bad things that happen in our lives are really just lessons we need to learn. These experience are just preparing us for something better, even if in the moment we feel hopeless or disappointed in ourselves, we need to remember that everything is going to be okay. Everything that happens to us makes us who we are. We didn't come here to earth to be perfect, we came here to eventually one day become perfect. Practice makes perfect. When you practice something you don't always get it right the first time, or the second time, or even the third time. But eventually you learn how to do something the way it was meant to be done. We have to practice living and learning before we can be perfect. And it's not always easy. However, I have come to realize that all the hard things we have to go through, and all the mistakes we make may seem to be hurting us in the moment, but they aren't. They're helping us learn and become stronger.

I have made many mistakes in my life, and so has everyone else. No on is perfect, and I am thankful for this simple truth. We can't always control what happens to us, but we can control how we let it effect us. We can either be down in the dumps and let these hard things ruin our lives, or we can learn from our experiences and become better and stronger because of them. Life is hard for a reason, if it wasn't hard you wouldn't learn anything. If we had a magical do-over button we could press every time something wen't wrong, what would you learn? NOTHING! And I mean, lets face it, life would be pretty boring if we didn't make any mistakes! Everyone and everything would be perfect and we would be living on a little marshmallow cloud full of rainbows completely oblivious to everything.

Ignorance is bliss you say? I think not. Do you know how many mistakes it took until Thomas Edison invented the light bulb? 3,000. But he also did not consider himself a failure. He had simply found 3,000 ways not to make a light bulb. He LEARNED from his mistakes and now we have the wonderful light bulb, and computers, and heaters for our homes, and a whole lot of other things that we take for granted.

I am thankful for mistakes because without them life would be really boring and lame. I am thankful for mistakes because they help me to become a better person. I am thankful for mistakes because they are blessings from God.

~Hannah

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