Mistakes are inevitable. If we’re really lucky, they’re not catastrophic. Part of how we reconcile mistakes, big or small, is by rationalizing them as learning opportunities. It’s something I struggle with in lessons often, tying to find that balance between giving students the freedom to safely make some mistakes - because the lessons learned from mistakes tend to have a far greater impact than me hollering the same platitudes over and over - while also keeping them safe in proximity of a 1,200 pound animal.
But sometimes the mistakes we make have no tidy learning points. Or, at least, they fail to teach us anything new.