An Ordinary Day--- Mistakes included, and accepted

9:47 am. About 17 minutes later than I intended to get up. I should’ve gotten up the second I read the time, yet I stayed in bed anyways.

10:30 am: The time my family was supposed to attend church.We all took our time in the morning. We decided to go to a different church at 11.

11:09 am: We were late for church. My parents easily get upset when we’re late (although it happens frequently). We planned to go to a church in Cloverdale. We changed our minds and went to one in Langley.

“If we risk nothing, we gain nothing” read the description for this week’s Mass in the little red Sunday Missal. Well, that was something to think about.

12 pm: My family planned to go to IHOP for brunch.

Sometime after 12 pm at IHOP: There was a bit of a line up so we just looked at the menu while waiting to get seated. I wasn’t sure what I was craving. I planned to get this Cinna-Stack French toast thing.

After we got seated: We were given this “Holiday menu” that featured these exciting-sounding holiday-inspired pancakes. I glanced upon these “Pumpkin Praline Pancakes—I was instantly enticed. I had never heard of them before, let alone tried them. But they sounded delicious.

Ordering: I ordered them.

1 something: Our orders arrived. The pancakes were amazing.Good conversation with the family.
Approximately 2 pm: We came back home. I planned to start homework. I got distracted by Facebook and listening to music on YouTube.

2:30ish: I decided to start doing this post.

3:04pm: The time now. (As I wrote/am writing this)

In “Improv Wisdom”, Patricia Ryan Madson says that a mistake is usually a “result that we had not planned –something unexpected, an odd outcome or side journey, usually something new” (p.104). Between the time I woke up and the time that I’m writing this, a lot of “mistakes” happened. Somewere unplanned (waking up late), some were deliberate (choosing to stay in bed and take my time in the morning), and some just happened because they did(deciding to go to a different church). You can even say that my ordering of Pumpkin Praline pancakes was a mistake. Thank goodness they were fantastic. But my point is that despite whatever mistakes I made or were made today, I still ended up getting to this point where I am completely engrossed in doing my homework perfectly fine.

The value of this “eventual okay” is something that I’ve learned to appreciate because it reminds me that there is nothing so problematic that can occur that doesn’t have a solution. Moreover, it reminds me that it’s okay to not always be certain of an outcome, because we always learn something from taking chances. What if the Pumpkin Praline pancakes were gross? Well, at least I’d learn that they’re gross and I’d know not to order those again. Perhaps that means I probably shouldn’t try that particular flavour again. But it doesn’t mean that I should stop trying new flavours.

Making mistakes is inevitable. And I tend beat myself up for the ones I make, whether deliberate or accidental. But what I’m learning to accept is that since they are inevitable, we might as well choose to be happy anyways and do the best we can to move on. We might mess up A LOT along the way. But maybe it’s that balance of mistakes and lessons that makes life awesome.