Sometimes it is really hard to do things right. I was in slow traffic and there was a car that was trying to pull out into it. I stopped the car crawl to let the car into the slow traffic. He pulled in. The car behind me started honking impatiently.

“I was just trying to be nice,” I said to no one in particular. I feel good when I can be nice to another person.

And then I began to wonder about the woman honking behind me. What was her story? What made her so impatient with my niceness?

Was she already 10 minutes late to the pediatrician? Had she been walking out the door to take her child to the doctor and he pooped his diaper? So, did she have to go back in and change him, making an already hectic day more stressful. And late?

Or maybe she is stressed because she just got a call from her 89 year old mother who had just fallen and could not get up.

I realized in thinking thusly that it isn’t always easy to be nice—especially to everyone all at one time. When we are nice to one person, we may be creating a minor inconvenience for another. Or we may be blocking the way for another to address a more significant crisis.

So, not sure that we can always be nice. Maybe the best we can do is be nice to the person in front of us and hope it doesn’t create too many problems for the one behind us.

I make mistakes. I made one several years ago that I regret. I invested some money in a company. It was an upstart company with a really good idea. I invested time trying to make the company work. I offered creative ideas for the product. I tried to network to help find potential partners.

But, the good idea died. Not for lack of wisdom but for lack of execution.

When I think about that experience, I know that I didn’t intend to make a mistake. I considered all the issues I could think of and decided that this was a good use of my resources of time and money. I wanted to make a good decision and I believed that I had.

The problem was, it didn’t turn out well. Factors beyond my control had more influence than I thought they would. The decision to publish a product just as the digital world was emerging to forever change the world of information sharing turned out to not be a good decision.

Most people I know don’t make mistakes intentionally. Most people I know try to take into account the multiple factors that are at play in any situation and then decide to do what they think is best. Most of the time the decisions are not clear cut. Many times the choices aren’t between good and bad, but between better and worse or between good and good.

So, as I reflect on my mistake on my investment, I discover grace inside myself for myself. I would like to undo some things and re-do some things. I cannot. But, I know that I tried to not make the mistake that the decision turned out to be.

And if I can find grace for myself, maybe I can have grace for others who made mistakes. At least I can consider that they didn’t intentionally decide to do something that didn’t work out as well as they had hoped.

JUST BEING NICE

MISTAKES