May 31

So you’ve made a mistake. Who hasn’t? But perhaps you feel it’s a pretty serious one. I have always liked the following quotation from Grove Patterson, a famous editor.

A boy . . . leaned against the railing of a bridge and watched the current of the river below . . . Sometimes the current went more swiftly and again quite slowly, but always the river flowed on under the bridge.

Watching the river that day, the boy made a discovery. It was not the discovery of a material thing, something he might put his hand upon. He could not even sees it. He had discovered an idea.

Quite suddenly, and yet quietly, he knew that everything in his life would someday pass under the bridge and be gone like water . . . And he didn’t worry unduly about his mistakes after that and he certainly didn’t let them get him down, because it was water under the bridge.