Life Is A Mistake (And So Is This Title)

I’ve never met anyone who didn’t want to write a brilliant story with the one life they’ve been given.

So why do so many of us fail to put down on the pages of existence the kind of lives we aspire to? Perhaps we are caught up in the paralyzing prison of our minds, analyzing each action before it is lived, trying to avoid any mistakes. Maybe our life-stories end up stranded between our ears.

We need to write the stories of our lives now, and save the editing for later…

When I began UnTangled in January, I discovered the posts tumbled out of me. When I sat at the computer, it was like a dam burst, and a flood of words would pour forth.

But in recent weeks, the writing slowed down. Each post materialized like a slow trickle. I still enjoyed the writing. But deep down, I wondered if my words were drying up.

Last week, I realized what was happening.

I was editing as I wrote.

And I was reminded writing and editing are two separate processes. Trying to edit while you write is fatal to the creative event. It’s like a white-hot sun drying up the river of generativity and spontaneity and passion. Editing is critical to producing things of beauty in the world.* But its place is after the writing.

Yet, I think many of us are writing our life-stories, and trying to edit them as we go.

I think we harbor the misconception that our lives get messed up by bad choices. But I think most of us with stories still-waiting-to-be-told have not made bad choices—we’ve made no choices. We aren’t writing crummy stories—we’re simply not writing our life-stories at all. Because our existential pens are frozen in midair, with a kind of paralysis by analysis.

And our lives are drying up because of it.

So, why do we continue to edit? Why don’t we just brazenly write the stories of our lives and save the editing for later?

I think we are constantly guarding against making mistakes.

We wake each morning, and we begin planning, rather than living. We become like directors of our life-stories, rather than actors in them. We try to orchestrate the perfect day for ourselves and our families and our co-workers. We balance work and kids and finances and we constantly second-guess our choices, wondering who we are hurting and which person in our life will end up holding a permanent grudge.

We are afraid of offending anyone, so we sift through our thoughts, and we settle on the safest words—the dialogue least likely to attract negative attention. Having been taught we must not upset others, we edit out anything visceral and real.

We avoid mistakes, because they may reveal parts of us we wish to keep hidden. Because, you see, our mistakes make us vulnerable.

Our mistakes reveal the cracks in our armor. They reveal our imperfections. They advertise us as broken, fallible creatures. And we are terrified others will decide our mistaken actions mean we are a mistake.

Instead of being in error, we are afraid others will think we are an error.

Even the dictionary tries to shame us for our mistakes, defining mistake as “an error in action, calculation, opinion, or judgment caused by poor reasoning, carelessness, insufficient knowledge, etc.”

Really?

Can you argue with a dictionary?

Maybe it’s a mistake, but I think I will.

I think the vast majority of mistakes we make have nothing to do with crappy reasoning, acting careless, or being ignorant. I think we make mistakes because mistakes happen.

They just happen.

So, we must end the ceaseless editing of our lives. We must enter into writing an incredibly rough draft, mistakes and typos and all. If we can do so, we will make mistakes, but we will learn from them, and our stories will come alive with fallible creatures living redemptive stories in a crazy world.

In his song, “Alive In The World,” Jackson Browne writes:

I want to live in the world,

Not inside my head.

I want to live in the world,

I want to stand and be counted…

I want to live in the world,

Not behind some wall.

I want to live in the world,

Where I will hear if another voice should call

To the prisoner inside me,

To the captive of my doubt,

Who among his fantasies

Harbors the dream of breaking out,

And taking his chances

Alive in the world…

With its beauty and its cruelty,

With its heartbreak and its joy,

With it constantly giving birth to life

And to forces that destroy,

And the infinite power of change

Alive in the world

I started editing while I was writing, because I suddenly felt like my words mattered. You were telling me they matter. And I don’t want to steer you wrong. I don’t want to make a mistake.

But there’s something I want even more than avoiding my own mistakes.

I want to live. I want to write my life story with passion and hopeful abandon.

And I want you to do so as well.

I want you to stop editing as you go. I want you to live in the world, instead of inside your own head. I want you to find freedom from the captivity of your doubt, and I want you to walk tall into a world crying out for a good story. I want you to live a life fully immersed in a world rich with both heartache and joy.

If you are ready to begin writing your story, if you are ready to begin the joyful making-of-mistakes that any life contains, you will join the army of courageous souls who march through my office every day, deciding the worthwhile cost of really living is the vulnerability of mistakes:

Couples who finally, tenderly, share the heartache of a honeymoon that wounded them rather than exhilarating them.

Young men who publish their thoughts in the school newspaper and smile peacefully as the taunts roll in, because it feels so good to be swept up in the river of really living.

Young ladies who eat thick sandwiches, no longer worrying about the thickness of their waist, because life tastes good and its time to eat it up.

Elderly men who have waited for years to say “I love you” to their children—because for some reason no one ever said it to them, and the idea makes them queasy—finally saying the words and feeling their hearts throb with life in an entirely new way.

Join us.

Stop trying to live your lives just right. Instead, just write.

And when you end up needing to make edits, when you end up needing to apologize for a mistake—and you will—do that with your whole heart, as well.

*About the Blog: The next post will focus on the process of editing, especially surrounding ourselves with good “editors,” who we can trust when they tell us we messed up, and entering into the “editing” of an apology with our whole hearts.

 Share Your Comment! Did I make any mistakes in this post today? I hope so, and I’m wide open to hearing what you think! Please feel free to share your ideas. And don’t worry about making a mistake!

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Photo Credit: Taken from this website.