For a long time, I was thinking backwards.

I was trying to fix how erroneous I am.  Reduce the number of mistakes.

But then it dawned on me.  I am fundamentally a good person.  But the life I was trying to live was not a good match for me.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I stopped striving to do a good job.  But nowadays, I try to think not in terms of how to reduce mistakes, but to approach things so that it’s OK if I make mistakes.

Margin of error.  Safety buffer.  Having a spare already in case it gets lost.

If I need to be somewhere, plan to be there early so in case something unexpected happens, I can still make it.

It’s such a simple idea, I feel very dumb that I really haven’t looked at things that way.  And still, there are many moments when I’m trying to cram too much in, not leaving any margins of error, thinking that I can get away with it. Well, I do get away with it some of the times (which isn’t really helping in the big scheme of things) but it’s stressful and worrisome.  I don’t enjoy it.

Giving myself a margin of error is much more humane.  I’m not demanding myself to be some kind of a machine, requiring the kind of precision and reliability I expect of my computers.  Hell, my computers aren’t all that reliable, either.  I swear these complex machines are getting more humane-like — meaning, they have temperaments that seem oddly humane these days.

To err is human, right?  Well, it’s about time I start accepting that, allowing my humanity to simply be what it is.  Unpredictable and not always reliable — but always, always good.   Because life has a margin of error.  And it’s much bigger than what I think it is.