Bonking on Branches

When a person bonks their head on a low-hanging branch of the tree, they usually become slightly annoyed (either at themselves or at the tree) and make a mental note to pay more attention to that limb in the future.

If that person bonks their head on the same branch a second time within the same morning, both the irritation and the resolution to be cautious increase.

By the third time a person hits their head on that same tree limb, it becomes very likely that they'll take some form of action to prevent the incident from happening again. For instance, they might hang a rope from that branch in such a way that they might see the rope and remember to avoid the limb.

This may work several times.

It also might happen that, even with the rope hanging visibly from the low-hanging branch, the person still manages to hit his or her head on the branch again by walking toward it backward.

Some people are not terribly bright.

Though, to be fair to the person who repeatedly accidentally hit their head on the same branch on the same day, many other people, most of us in fact, repeatedly make similarly foolish mistakes. Maybe we fall victim to the small vices we may have. Maybe we make mistakes, but fail to learn from them. I'm sure we all do things we wish we wouldn't do. A wise man is not one who never makes foolish mistakes, but one who learns from such mistakes and takes measures to prevent them.

The question is what measures we can take to reduce the likelihood of repeated mistakes, and what we do if and when those measures fail. Tying a rope to a tree branch may help us see the branch before we hit it, but only if we're watching where we're going. When a preventative measure fails, we should try to find out whether the preventative measure was simply ineffective or whether it merely failed to prevent all possible causes of the problem.

Also, trying a rope to a tree branch is not the universal solution to our everyday mistakes. Unfortunately, each problem is different, and thus requires different solutions. As a person may have done with a rope and a tree branch, we may just have to try something and see if it works, though the Prophets tend to be good sources of ideas to try, depending on the problem.

Another important thought to consider after hearing this hypothetical story is how many times one is willing to suffer the results of a poor decision before they take active measures to prevent it from happening again. Do we try to fix the problem as soon as we learn that there is one, or do we wait until we decide that the problem is serious and/or frequent enough that we need to do something about it? While it may not be practical to take measures to prevent any mistake we could possibly make, it's certainly foolish to make the same mistake repeatedly when you could do something to prevent it. Some people only need to hit their head on a branch once to learn well enough to avoid it in the future. Others may hit their heads two or three times before they manage to prevent it from happening again. And some of us are still bonking our heads on branches, wondering how we could be so foolish, when the question we really ought to be considering is what we would have to do to become wise.

The ability to prevent repeated mistakes lies in seeing patterns of behavior and occurrences leading up to the mistakes. If we notice that we hit our heads on branches when we push a wheelbarrow full of dirt toward a trailer or when we go to where we left our backpacks to get a drink of water, we might learn to take extra care and look up when we push wheelbarrows or take a water break. If we can find the patterns in our lives, we can begin to look for ways to change them.

We make foolish mistakes, sometimes repeatedly. But if we can learn why we keep making mistakes like those, and take active measures to prevent them, we might bonk our heads on branches a few fewer times than we might have.