Owning up.

After I had woken up early & had finished with my first morning ritual of prayer, I found my way to the kitchen for my second - a cup of coffee. As I was fixing my drink, a friend joined me in the kitchen. We were exchanging niceties, as I fished out the cups & decoction, and put the milk on the stove to boil. Very soon, a third friend also joined us & we got chatting as we waited for the milk to boil. I stepped aside briefly to the adjacent room, to fetch myself some water to drink. When I got back, I noticed the milk was boiling over the pan, and my two friends were engrossed in their conversation.

"I was away for hardly a few seconds & you let this happen!", I exclaimed to the friend who had joined me first. It was an immediate & almost involuntary response as I turned off the stove & looked for a piece of cloth to clean up the milk which had spilled over.

"I was indeed being wastchful until this fellow joined us. Then he distracted me and I missed it," said my second friend, looking at the third person in the room. His reaction too was almost immediate.

The third friend calmly looked on and said he had nothing to do with this.

Later, I was reflecting on the incident. After all, it was I who started making the coffee. I had put the milk to boil, and therefore, in retrospect, it was I who was solely responsible for the oversight. Yet, I chose to quickly, instinctively blame another person. And he in turn, equally quickly offloaded the burden to someone else!

Very often, the first step to learning, improving and growing, is to acknowledge our mistakes. If we set out to do things, rather than wait for them to do done, there are of course going to be mistakes. It isn't just by making mistakes that we learn as is commonly said. I believe it is by reflecting on our mistakes that we are able to garner powerful lessons for ourselves. And in these reflections lies our growth. And the starting point for this is simply to own up, to take responsibility for our mistakes, rather than blame the other. The moment we try to shift the blame on someone else, we willingly forego the opportunity to learn.

When I thought about it a little more, I realised that our education system may not encourage students to make mistakes. More often than not, mistakes are frowned upon by some, and laughed at by yet others. Therefore, most of us grow up not wanting to make mistakes at all. And even if we do, our first instinct is to pass on the blame to someone else, rather than stand up for ourselves, own our mistakes, reflect and learn. We must create an atmosphere where children are free to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them. Not only are we thereby creating an emotionally safe learning environment but we are also enabling possibilities of powerful, contextual learning that can become deeply personal.