A dutch adage goes: "A donkey does not hit his head on the same rock twice", which is supposed to relate to people and their mistakes... ahem. There is one bright side in this... for the donkey. To people with their 'superior brain' and 'intellect' this does not apply.
Many -if not all- hit that 'rock' well over 2 times and sometimes you just lose count. The stupidity that inhabits, nay, houses in people is embarrassingly high! Mistakes are made over and over, and, thinking they -we- learned anything from it is a gross misunderstanding of how the human animal acts before, during and after their mistakes.
Fire is hot. When an animal comes close or in touch with fire, he will know the next time not to. Ever. (Or at least as far as he can avoid it.) Simple logic. Man on the other hand likes to burn his fingers (and not just his fingers) to a great extent many a times over!
And there are many factors that contribute to this behavior. Failure, a self destructive ego, aggression, depression, boasting, jealousy and other petty human ailments, or a 'certain state of mind' if you will. There are too many reasons why you should never compare humans to animals when it comes to making mistakes, cause humans take the heavy weight title championship in this. Just take a look around and observe for say a week... or actually you could make it a day, since that will be enough to prove my point.
Keeping yourself in check may seem like a hard task (I've actually had people say to me: "How can you live like that... that sounds tiring and too much of a burden!"), but if you want to avoid certain situations and really make the best of things, keeping 'an eye out' is definitely one way to not hit the proverbial rock!
Thinking is another way. But that is too much for most these days so we'll just leave it at that. You think or you don't. You win or lose. Whichever you prefer. It's just too bad that when that rock gets hit there's so much complaining and whining that comes along with it. "Get over it, think next time!". Next time... yes, well.
Moreover I think the crux is recognition when mistakes re-occur, but in a different jacket. A parallel has to be made anytime something crosses your path that doesn't seem right (which may have similarity to something that has happened before), instead of just 'dealing with it'. You have a brain; use it. You have a mind; think!
Een ezel in het algemeen stoot zich niet tweemaal aan dezelfde steen.
ReplyDeleteHuman history only yields one continuous, unending lesson: mankind will keep making the same mistakes until the race goes extinct. We don’t have the wisdom of donkeys.