When We Stop Making Them About Us in Four Breaths

after “Do you trust yourself to learn from your own mistakes?”

Do I trust myself to learn from my mistakes? How do I see patterns that are not me, not you, not even us? This hits me in the breath —four of them —to know what mistakes actually can be. Maybe then I will learn how to trust my breath. The picture shows the electron diffraction pattern of icosahedrite, which retells how ripples interact and reveal the nature of light. (Creative Commons via Wikipedia)

I. Mistake as Movement

The miss teaches your muscles the shape of truth.
Balance by falling. Language by stumbling—
words we speak are born from an initial trip.

I tried. I participated.
Motion that didn’t land where intended—
but motion nonetheless.

II. Mistake as Mirror

What if a mistake is the unseen part of your pattern?
What if it simply reflects what light is?
Maybe it is a ripple on the pond and it diffracts—
when the whole pond is breathing,
water never accuses—
it co-creates with light, reflects, and washes.

III. Mistake as Mythology

What if mistakes are short moments before a retelling of stories?
What if all short moments carry an origin story—
“Here is where I turned,”
“Here is where I hurt someone,”
“Here is where my mouth learned it could wound.”

Retellings don’t erase, they add, they ripple outward—
and in their rippling,
we diffract: we were not fixed, and each time
we could move differently.

IV. Mistake as Material

What if a mistake is an unfinished act returning to the earth?

It diffracts into insight, humility, humor, and the rot that gives off warmth.
Maybe mistakes are compost—
our site to rot and sprout.

Coda

“Do you trust yourself to learn from your own mistakes?”

The question asks for your body, not your answer.

Perhaps it was never about you, or me—
but about what mistakes are
when we stop making them
about us.

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This text is in dialogue with “Do you trust yourself to learn from your mistakes?” by

Goddess Amina

.