Mistakes to Live By: An Ignatian Story of Leveraging Failure

In season two of the 2021 Netflix Spanish drama series Merli: Sapere Aude, one of the main characters, Maria Bolaño (María Pujalte Vidal), a philosophy professor, emphatically asks her ethics students whether or not they want to exist or to live. The distinction being that the former is presented simply as a biological instinct while the latter is an intentional choice whose accomplishments are hallmarks of human imagination, passion, and purpose. I’m sure most of us would agree with those students that we want to live. It’s only natural that we want to be viewed as accomplished students, successful employees, and admirable parents. 

We seek a robust life, but how often do we acknowledge and teach the less glamorous life lessons learned along the way? In short, do we make mistakes to live by?  

We’re consistently taught to accentuate the positive and not even mention the possible negative. To project ourselves as skilled warriors, not struggling experimenters. For many, negatives showcase weakness, incompleteness, deficit, and failure. When’s the last time you’ve seen failure highlighted on a resume or cover letter? Despite our natural human inclination to being really skilled mistake makers, we’re taught that we’re supposed to follow the script that we’ve got it all together, are always dependable, meet every deadline, and never louse things up. 

To be imperfect is to be incomplete and vulnerable, and we’re rarely interested in sharing that self-diagnosis. The entertainment industry teaches us to defeat the unwelcome—but inevitable—onset of crow’s feet, wrinkles, and flabby tummies with proven science in order to appear taut, flawless, and chiseled. Mistakes aren’t sexy.

Yet, mistakes are often the reason why we achieve what we do in life—successes reached from having made mistakes. A lot of mistakes and a lot of teachable moments. Real achievement requires effort and resilience—grit. And part of being gritty means that we humbly acknowledge and celebrate imperfections. Doing so can also help us feel less stressed and anxious and not to take ourselves so seriously.

I remember what a tough but lovable Jesuit teacher at my high school always told us: please make mistakes everyday, just not the same ones. He explained that honest mistakes, not ones resulting from laziness or apathy, help us define who we are and want to become in life. They are the meaningful steps to achievement and important life lessons in and out of school. 

To that end, he encouraged us to keep a logbook of our goof-ups, academic and otherwise, and my list was more substantial than I had hoped by the end of senior year. Rediscovering that logbook years later, I realize just how powerful that life lesson was, and is, for me. And I definitely had many significant (and even funny) entries. 

Here are the highlights: spending an entire weekend writing an English term paper on Martin Luther King, Jr. when the assignment prompt was actually on Martin Luther (where was my head that week in school?); using the wrong Latin phrase in a college application essay (turns out I cursed that dean of admission rather than applauded her school’s academic rigor); not realizing there was a backside to a history midterm exam (the teacher let me retake it but at a ten percent grade penalty); and one of my favorite entries, not kissing my Junior Prom date before the dance ended and definitely not before that same Jesuit teacher asked my date about her high school’s Catholic retreat  program—buzz kill.

So what did all these mistakes and imperfections teach me? It taught me to spend the time to fully understand assignments both in and out of school and then to use my time and energy accordingly. It taught me to be more accountable and grateful since that teacher could have given me the failing grade I initially earned having taken only half the exam. I learned to pause and think before I write and rush through a project. It taught me to express myself clearly, concisely, and precisely and not toss in Latin phrases simply to appear sophisticated. I learned that speaking from the heart can be more compelling than Cicero (sometimes). 

I learned to always turn over the page and not sign anything that I didn’t review from top to bottom whether a history exam or apartment lease or even that crayon-composed contract made by the kid down the street who wants to mow my lawn. (I almost unknowingly agreed to this budding entrepreneur’s “weed removal fee.”) It  taught me to trust my inner geek and to kiss the girl when the moment is right and especially before Murphy’s Law takes effect. 

I learned that mistakes are defining moments along the journey, not defined arrivals. It teaches me to laugh at myself. It teaches me that mistakes can be an arsenal of collective wisdom to share with others, especially our students. It makes our failures and successes real, relevant, and revelatory. 

St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) teaches us to find God in all things, to learn and live with a discerning heart and to work to become the best versions of ourselves. Ignatius’s message transforms the head, heart, and hands. And making valuable mistakes can help us in this journey. 

A trusted friend of mine often harkens Ernest Hemingway when she tells students to picture an iceberg: the majority is below the surface and not visible. We only notice the smaller portion above sea level. Analogously, we often see the great achievements of others and think they came upon such success with flawless perfection. When, in reality, there were loads of mistakes, imperfections, and reformations below the surface—opportunities for grit. 

Instead of not giving up when things become difficult, we can leverage our mistakes to make us stronger, more resilient, more humble. And as Ignatius teaches, to become the best version of ourselves graces and human foul-ups interlaced. So, build your underwater iceberg, your reservoir of wisdom. Go make some mistakes to live by … just not the same ones.