Mistakes.

Salvadore Dali said, "Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them." 

I didn't have Dali's perspective on mistakes till a few days ago when I sat and reflected on a number of my latest mistakes. Now I'm sitting here pondering the sacred nature of my mistakes. Sacred, really? It was my destiny to make these mistakes... They were a test to make me stronger. Or a lesson to make me grow? Or maybe both. Or neither? A punishment, perhaps? Karma - for something I did in a year ago, or in another lifetime... I don't know.

I skip around years in my mind... trying to remember feelings, thoughts, people, moments... and for every single mistake I remember I have the surety that I never tried to correct a single one. I only remember recognizing my mistakes and doing better afterward. Because real mistakes can't be corrected. If you can correct a mistake, then it wasn't a mistake at all... it was just a badly managed moment or circumstance which you rectified and made good again.
Mistakes in principal don't work this way. You have to live with them till you die. They're kind of like tattoos, etched into you, a little piece of the whole that makes you You.

Rationalize them? This is even harder than the idea that a mistake can be corrected. Not that I could ever figure out how people fix things of that proportion. Like broken glass. You can glue it back together but you might cut your hands in the process... and the glass will look different, nor will it ever serve its original purpose. So can we agree, fixing a mistake is a mistake too?

It's not possible: there just isn't any rationale behind some things we do, or are capable of doing, there is no logical explanation for the person we become at certain points in our life, the triggers, the drivers inside us are so unknown to us that we act completely out of character, defy the patterns which make up our entire life's trajectory, cancel out the values we claim to live by, break the boundaries we hold so high.
The only rationale is to be brave enough to admit - I am human.

I've seen people blame mistakes on their childhood, on some emotional parental residue, on lack of finances, or having too much money... it's a long, dull, unimaginative, endless list. A list of excuses. A list to shift the responsibility. When in truth you did what you did because you wanted to do it. Period. Be honest. The thing about telling the truth is, it doesn't make sense. It has the power to hurt people. It has the potential to get you into trouble. Which is why we try so hard to rationalize our mistakes.
But... there is no logic in truth.
Truth is truth.
That's it.

Why do people want to be the victim despite being the villain, why do they want that sort of sympathy after making a mistake which they were fully aware they were making?
I read "Understand them thoroughly" and Carl Jung pops into my head with "Understanding does not cure evil..." 

My best teacher is my last mistake.
Who is yours?

The Story of Me

Someone asked me "What's your story?"

And my whole story came flooding to my mind. 

I don't think about it often, but I never forget it either. 

It's my root, my core, and all of me, every molecule, every facet stems from there. And it's such a long story, with so many people, in so many places. 

But that's not important. 

What's important is, my story has always inspired me. I've never been disappointed by my story. 

By events in my life, sure, disappointment is part of life. But the whole story is just amazing. 

From the baby girl who was born in February during a snowstorm in Quetta at an Army hospital, to the woman I am today. I've seen so much of life, some of it I never want to see again. And other moments which move me with such blinding feelings, of love, of a Higher Power, of the goodness of people, of Karma.

My earliest memory is when I was (maybe) 5. 

It's not summer yet. Karachi afternoon. I'm in the backyard at my grandfather's house. It looks like miles and miles of grass, even though it's just an ordinary garden. But I guess everything seems exaggerated when you're little. I'm wearing a red sweater, with a monkey's face on it. The monkey is blue and yellow. He has plastic eyes. The kind with a white base and transparent cover, with a small round black disc inside which moves when you move. My aunt who's just started college comes out. She's so beautiful. She's holding a silver, shiny, round steel bowl. "Michi, dekho meine kya banaya hai!"

I'm so excited, I think it's food.

I look at the bowl and it looks like watery mud, the kind that's on the side of the lawn after it rains. "Mujhe nahin khana..."

She laughs and looks even more beautiful, then sits on the veranda steps. Puts the bowl on her side, and reaches out to take me into her arms. I love hugs, I go willingly. I notice there are sticks in the mud in the bowl. She makes me sit on her leg and takes a stick out of the mud. Then takes my hand and starts drawing on it with the muddy stick. I try to pull my hand back but she tells me not to and I listen. She promises me something amazing will happen, I believe her. Some time later, a drawing of the monkey on my shirt is on my palm. I am mesmerized by it. I didn't know then, but that mud in the bowl was Henna.

And this memory has nothing to do with the whole story, the amazing story of my life, the story which inspires me, which inspires me every day, and makes me who I am.