DoNotErase

Browsing social media, as one does in this day and age, I came across a quote. It is unattributed:

“If you went back and fixed all the mistakes you ever made, you would erase yourself…”

The second part of the quote was added, and it said:

“…and that’s all I’ve ever needed to hear.”

I’ve been puzzling over this ever since. Initially, I want to agree. I want to consent that, yes, should I erase my mistakes, I as I know myself would cease to exist. Bound up with this is the assumption that as I am now, that who I am is a Good Thing. Well, I would like to mostly agree with that, too.

But, I find myself examining these premises a bit more deeply and questions arise: would I even want to fix my mistakes? Would that be desirable? Could one extract their mistakes from their successes and fix one while leaving the other unaltered? Are the two inextricably linked, in other words?

Am I anything without my mistakes, I wonder existentially? Without driving too far into the metaphorical weeds, the point is, I think, made.

Second, then, are the queries around whether or not who I am as I am is a Good Thing, warts and all. Are we, as humans, made by our failures? Do they, indeed, define us? The same could be said about successes. Are we who we are because we found success? Because we, at some point, did well? That infers that doing well is a good thing, and that doing poorly is a bad thing.

My society is tremendously invested in maximizing success and minimizing failure, as generally defined. The dearth of success is seen as lack of morality. Lack of backbone, of the Right Stuff. To not have success is, by definition, less than. To be successful is to be blessed, to be superior, to be on the Right Track. Do we exist in a black and white world, in which success is good and failure is bad? I reject that binary. The more I examine the life I continue to live I have come to the conclusion that life is capricious. The universe, as a whole, is uncaring about such small things such as success and failure.

Furthermore, success and failure are the same thing, given a long enough view. They are complementary sides of a two-faced coin, spinning in space, flipped, but never landing. One must have failure to have success, and success to have failure. Indeed, now we come to it: success and failure define each other. How do you know what success is unless you have failed? Without success, you don’t know what it is to achieve failure. Without the absence of light, luminosity has no meaning, in other metaphors.

Therefore, no, in answer to the many questions I posed earlier, I wouldn’t go back and erase the mistakes I made, thereby erasing myself as I am known. I know that I am who I am, and my mistakes/successes are but one fibre of my being, and are inextricably linked to each other.

Am I a person worthy of existing now as I am now? Yes, because my worth is not predicated on failure and success but on existence. I exist, therefore I am worthy. Whether I have succeeded or failed is irrelevant. As meaningless as those constructs are to place in opposition to each other, they are equally meaningless as a measure of worth, because worth is not about that at all.

Concluding the matter in mind is the conclusion of the quote: “and that’s all I needed to hear”. Not even close. I need to hear, and I need others to hear loudly and clearly, that success and failure do not make you who you are. They are but one facet of the multilayered being you are. They are not a measure of worth at all, that one should go back and erase one or the other. They are simply waypoints, signaling location, a way of saying “here I am” and nothing more.