4. To my son: You are a lifelong project

 

We all make mistakes in life, every single last damn one of us. I have made many mistakes in life. I have made many good moves and decisions as well, but a person tends to remember the mistakes more prominently, that's just a human thing. 

What separates the wheat from the chaff is this; we either learn from our mistakes and move forwards in self-correction, or fail to learn learn anything and move backwards. This is where the greatest humans are made, the ones that are able to recognize that what they are doing is wrong, and then figure out how to make it right. 

This is true of all aspects in life, we try to teach each other the proper way to go about life, but some don't understand or don't care. Those people are losers and will stay losers until a great moment of self discovery happens and they recognize the error of their ways (sometimes this never happens). So use social cues, use your brain, use common sense, logic and rationality. Too many of those walking around day-to-day don't have any common sense, so if you do you are miles ahead of those people in life.

And we are ALWAYS learning. From the moment you are born until the day you spring from this mortal coil, you are learning. When you stop learning, you stop existing as a human. There's this feedback loop of stupid going on and you have to tune into it, or stay stupid.

It goes like this: Do something stupid -> Think that was stupid and I didn't get a very good result from the stupid thing I did -> Stop doing stupid thing or change how it's done so it isn't stupid anymore -> get better result next time. 

It really is that simple. 

If you can master this and learn from mistakes (and hopefully keep those mistakes to a manageable level) you'll be laughing, and the world will be laughing with you. If you do something stupid, and then keep doing the same stupid thing, the world will start laughing at you and you'll be relegated to the stupid pile of humans, of which there are way too many already. 

 This goes for habits, actions, interactions, and situations. 

So learn for life. Stay out of the stupid pile.