Musings

Can all mistakes be forgiven? A colleague of mine made a fundamental mistake today which very nearly got her pulled off the file and to suffer the wrath of a partner. After the tears and yelling subsided, I took a moment to ponder this. It was totally out of character this lapse of judgment and certainly not a reflection of her quality as lawyer or a person. Perhaps it was fatigue or plain carelessness but it was a sad affair.

You always hear people say “it happens to the best of us” and even “it happens all the time”. Also considering we are all human and imperfect by our nature, isn’t it expected of us? Shouldn’t we in some crazy sense allowed an allowance of just how many mistakes we are allowed to make? And that be the case, why are mistakes not treated as another defect we have like a bad cold or cancer. I am sure you don’t berate that someone for being ill.

So in the case of “victimless crimes”, are we suppose to accept the very premise that we are unfortunately designed to fail at certain points in our lives? But what are “victimless crimes” even? Does it confine itself to physical harm? Or do you go as far to include monetary loss, emotional issues or even mental trauma? Take a wider stance and everything falls outside the scope of “victimless crimes”.

It is contradictory that whilst we accept that we are prone to mistakes (having the misfortune for being humans instead of angels), isn’t it also accepted that forgiveness is not a natural instinct of us? You hear the saying “to forgive is divine” which proves the point that it is against our nature to forgive.

So how can these two premises actually find a common ground. The only way of getting around it is to forsake our very nature. Maybe that’s the point of a commonly acceptable existence. To fight the temptation no matter how strong in being who you are. Absurd really.