Make Interesting Mistakes

I recently watched some episodes of HBO’s series Masterclass.

Playwright Edward Albee

If you have any special interest in an area of the arts, you might enjoy watching students meeting a master in the field for some personal mentoring of their craft. Artist Olafur Eliasson and singer Placido Domingo were two of the teachers. But my favorite, of course, was the episode when Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee met with four young writers to talk about his work.

And wouldn’t you know it, he said something wise enough about life that I had to share it with you. He was talking about one young writer he’d met in the show who left school for a year to tour and write in Paris. When asked if the kid was doing the right thing, Albee joked that he probably wasn’t, but that’s okay.

“I think people should be adventuresome,” Albee said. “I think people should make mistakes. Make the interesting mistakes. The trick is making more interesting mistakes and doing stuff that you may regret, but what’s wrong with that? There’s more regret in what you don’t do than what you do.”

Keep this in mind as you live and date. Date the wrong people, sure, but make them the wrong interesting people who provide you with an experience greater than a big yawn and wanting to crawl into bed early. Dating is all about trial and error, after all. That’s the point! The same way a writer should scrawl down their first draft without stopping to analyze and edit what they’re doing along the way, you, too, should follow your heart and date who feels right and who seems interesting. So what if each one isn’t The One? As Albee says, “What’s wrong with that?”

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Harry Potter: The “Magic” of Optimism
Wise Words from an Undone She

Big love,