Cherish Mistakes

I like to recall past errors to rectify present behavior. In this manner, instead of being all negative and lamentable, a mistake can help to ensure positive results for the future. I cherish my mistakes, because they are effective teachers. Perhaps this is why, or so it is said, that certainty and idealism and their close relation, fanaticism, are more common among the young than the old. The young have not had time and opportunity yet to make their mistakes. They tend to see the choices before them as simple and straight-cut. With experience, new dimensions to situations and behavior become evident, and one grows more circumspect.

My brother believed that life imitated chess and vice versa, and one of his reasons was that mistakes in chess are similar to mistakes in life due to their being the result of oversight.

Off topic: I find oversight an odd word. The primary meaning is an unintended mistake. The secondary meaning is watchful care or management. The implication seems to be that managers are clueless.