Errors We Humans Do
We all make mistakes, right? To err is human, to forgive divine. Mistakes are just bound to happen because we are not perfect, try as we might. It is just how we are built.The only people who were perfect are saints, but they are no longer alive . The rest of us err and make mistakes. We do something we didn’t intend to do or, on the flip side, we don’t do something we intended to do.
I believe that we need to forgive ourselves. Any notion of God that I can imagine includes one in which God can and does forgive our mistakes. If we take any of the standard notions of God (that God has full control and power and we have free will), then how could God be mad when we make mistakes?
When I watch my children color or draw, I notice that they frequently miss their target and go outside of the lines or draw something unintended. Making a “mistake” is how we learn and grow. The problem is that we are all so hard on ourselves when we make mistakes.
We have to make mistakes in order to grow.
So here’s my question: Dare I live as though I’m allowed to make mistakes?
Think about the people who you like in your life. They’re not the ones who hold you to absolute perfection. And, aren’t they the ones you hold to absolute perfection? No, they’re the ones who you allow to err and those who allow you to err.
When you make a mistake, you ought to forgive yourself. Forgiving ourselves has to be the greatest gift that we can give ourselves, and the greatest gift we can give other people.
When we forgive ourselves, we lessen the baggage with which we walk around.
This week’s #wisdom_biscuit:
Forgive yourself.
We all make mistakes.
Rabbi Brian Doesn’t Understand
August 10, 2026
In the 18th century, in Hannipol, a small district of Khmelnytskyi Oblast, in present-day western Ukraine, there was a rabbi known as Reb Zusya. Zusya, a pious man, taught about humility and had a strange habit of referring to himself in the third person. Instead of saying, “I am hungry,” or “I don’t understand,” he would say, “Zusya is hungry,”
