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?