The Train We Ride

Just last week I was travelling by train from London to Birmingham and found myself in a seat that faced backwards.

Gazing out of the window, I enjoyed seeing the world through which I had passed simply speeding by.

Not a very new experience, of course. At one time or another most of us have travelled with our backs to the direction in which we were going.

But this time a novel thought occurred to me.

What if we could live our lives backwards? Wouldn't it be simple to avoid mistakes? We might easily look back on our mistakes, see them coming and then avoid them.

We might even be able to move in another direction.

But in the real world -- the world in which we live -- time moves forward, not backward and avoiding mistakes isn't nearly as easy as gazing retrospectively from a train window.

And because of this, the only possible way to avoid making mistakes is to avoid making anything -- to avoid taking any kind of action whatsoever.

Yet this, of course, besides being an impossibility, would be one of the greatest mistakes we could make.

Because without our mistakes we would remain as we were. We would not grow. We would not learn. We would not move forward.

In the vocabulary of psychology, mistakes are called 'successive approximations'. Whether we are learning to ride a bicycle, read, or navigate life's course, through successively approximating the correct result, we eventually learn to get it right.

The fact is that in order to grow, to learn and to move forward, we need to make mistakes, we need to 'successively approximate'. This doesn't mean that we should seek out mistakes, of course: They will come anyway.

After all, even the wisest person amongst us will make mistakes.

The real wisdom comes in learning from our mistakes -- and then forgiving ourselves for those mistakes.

When we do that we become free to move forward with our lives.

If you find yourself clinging to past mistakes; if you feel lost, anxious and fed up; if you are confused and unhappy, then there really is something you can do about it.

The train you are riding will take you even deeper into the darkest of tunnels; if you allow it to. In fact, if you wait long enough, it will take you all the way to the cemetry. But you can choose to get off that train at any time you like.

You are not powerless.

It is within your power to choose the train you are riding on. It is within your power to live your life in a positive, forward moving direction.

Why not get up and change trains now?

There really is no better time to get your life back on the right track!

" Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards "
Soren Kierkegaard