Learning to Be Wrong.

Everything feels like it is moving so fast.

Lately, I have noticed a quiet urgency underneath almost everything I do—at work, while eating, while driving, and more recently, even while dating.

There is this subtle question running in the background: What is the fastest way to get where I want to go?

And somehow, we convince ourselves that once we get there, we will finally slow down. Finally feel satisfied. Finally feel settled. But then there is always something else.

What’s next?

It has been difficult unlearning old ways of thinking, reacting, and behaving while simultaneously trying to learn how to respond differently—to think more deeply, move more intentionally, and make choices that reflect the person I am becoming. While walking today, I realized there is still a part of me that is deeply concerned with time.

I feel late.

Late to dating and marriage.Late to where I thought I would be in my career.Late financially.Sometimes, even late in my own personal growth.

There is a persistent thought that says, I would be so much further if I had done this sooner. If I had known that earlier. If I had made a different choice. And when I think that way, every step starts to feel like something that needs to be evaluated. Every decision becomes something to get right. Every misstep gets added to an invisible account of what it has already cost me.

The awareness of the consequences of my past mistakes can create dread in my present season.

I want to be mindful. I want to recognize patterns. I want to make healthy decisions for myself and for the people who depend on me.

But somewhere along the way, awareness can quietly become hypervigilance.

And even growth can become its own trap when awareness turns into hypervigilance.

When learning from the past becomes trying to guarantee the future.

When being intentional becomes second-guessing every decision.

When trying not to repeat old mistakes makes us afraid to make any new ones.

And I think that is the tension I am sitting with right now.

I know more than I used to. I pay attention differently. I understand myself more deeply.

But I am still human.

Not every decision I make will produce the outcome I hoped for.

I will misunderstand things sometimes.

I will trust people who disappoint me.

I may take opportunities that do not work out.

I may choose something with the best information I have and later realize I would have done it differently.

That does not automatically mean I failed.

It may simply mean I lived.

I miss being free to make mistakes.

Not the freedom to be careless or ignore what I have learned, but the freedom to make a decision without treating the possibility of being wrong like a catastrophe.

The freedom to gather information without immediately needing a conclusion.

The freedom to notice a pattern without turning it into a prediction.

The freedom to trust that even if something does not go the way I hoped, I will still know how to take care of myself afterward.

So my question for this season is:

Can I trust myself enough to make a choice without needing a guarantee that it will be the right one?

Maybe that is another part of growth.

Not learning how to avoid every mistake.

But learning that I can survive being wrong.