How I Love Lucy was born? We decided that instead of divorce lawyers profiting from our mistakes, we’d profit from them.
Lucille Ball
Janice Dickinson, who British history mainly records as slightly less popular than Christopher Biggins, has said she sees herself as having been “shaped by my mistakes”. (We can’t find any interviews, but we’re sure that her plastic surgeons speak fondly of her in public too. Perhaps if she’d been in The Rocky Horror Show in her youth…?) Staying with the arts (and continuing the spirit of generosity), many musicians have spoken about their attitudes to mistakes. Miles Davis simply said “Do not fear mistakes. There are none”, while Ornette Coleman’s approach was perhaps a little more humble:
It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.“
Coleman’s imply one common view of mistakes – that they are an opportunity for learning from direct experience, a way of finding out both about whatever area of life you make the mistake in and about yourself. (Indeed, in another corner of the arts, James Joyce called mistakes “the portals of discovery”.) With mistakes, a lot comes down to how you view them – both in the abstract and in the aftermath.
