mistakes, mistakes

we all make mistakes, and trust me we've made many.

but surely, learning from them and taking away valuable life lessons has to be top priority - after the errors have been made.

with respect to this, i hope that a close friend of mine will, in the near future, be able to start taking his failures as lessons, and eventually rise from the darkness. admittedly, it will be one hell of an uphill climb, but with a clear direction in mind, together with determination and perseverance... like i said, it is possible.

and i guess this may serve as a reminder to us all as well. after all, learning from failures does not apply solely to the mistakes we've made ourselves, but also to the mistakes of others.

it is not easy to avoid falling into the same trap just by observing other victims and telling yourself that you won't be like them (since one has not experienced making the actual mistake itself), but try we must.
and change for the better we must, if we have erred.

on a side note, i guess it isn't a question of how much the past matters, but instead, of how much we have learnt from our pasts. we've all done some good and some bad in our lives, but putting the good aside, it is how we've responded and reacted to the bad, that matters.

imagine two criminals with the same history - one has learnt from his mistakes and turned over a new leaf, while the other is a classic case of the leopard who never changes its spots. whose past matters more? the first one because he has successfully changed for the better after all that he's been through, or the second one because his past still defines who he is now?

does the answer depend on how you interpret the question?