Correcting Mistakes

Just a short while ago, I learned a lesson about correcting my mistakes, and my teacher was a spoon.

I was clearing the sink so I could hook the dishwasher up to the faucet and run it. The sink was filled with water and food debris, so I turned on the garbage disposal. Immediately, I knew something was wrong. The garbage disposal was making sounds it wasn't supposed to make. I turned it off and looked more closely, and I found a thin, metal spoon standing, handle down, in the garbage disposal.

I took the spoon out and inspected the damage. The end of the handle was a bit chewed up, but it seemed okay. I regretted having run the garbage disposal without being absolutely sure that it was clear, but there was nothing I could do about that at that point.

I put the spoon in the dishwasher, and I almost left it at that, but then I realized that there was something I could do to correct my mistake. I couldn't prevent the damage from having been done, but I could use a file from my multi-tool to try to repair the damage. So, after washing the spoon by hand and hooking up the dishwasher, I spent the next several minutes filing down the rough edges I had accidentally created.

Sometimes in life, we make mistakes. Sometimes we're careless, and sometimes there are things we don't know, but whether through sheer ignorance and bad luck or through any folly or failing of our own, we occasionally cause damage. By that point, the damage has been done. We can be sorry for it, and we can try to be more careful in the future, but there's nothing we can do to prevent the harm that we've already caused. At that point, our best recourse is to try to repair the damage. This often takes far more time, care, and effort than we exercised when making the mistake, or even than it would have taken to prevent the mistake, but it's important to do what we can to fix our mistakes.

Filing rough edges off a spoon is a minor thing, and I'm not sure anyone would have paid it much notice if I hadn't done it, but doing what I can to fix my mistakes is a good habit, as are apologizing and being kind, even when the recipient of that kindness is an inanimate object. I regret having damaged the spoon in the first place, but I don't regret spending some time filing it down.