Undo

The girls both got Leappads for Christmas (probably one of the most used gifts ever bought) there is an app on them for drawing that they fancy quite a bit. The paint option makes this strange and almost inappropriate squirting sound and the 'undo' quips loudly in almost a singing fashion that it is undoing. There are jokes in the household about the undo of the Leappad that has me thinking about permanence.

How wonderful would it be if we could just click a button and erase whatever it was that we did or said? No mistakes, no hurtful actions or words, no regrets, no faults. Sadly and happily at the same time, that is not the way things work. The sadly part is pretty obvious. We don't want to mess up and hurt people, but that is all part of being human. Fallible is something that affects us all, a common trait we share with the entire human race. Think on that for a moment - despite all of our differences: broad culture, languages, heritage, gender, financial status, religion and viewpoints we are all tied by the bind of of having fault and making mistakes. That is a bond, a thread between all of  6 billion plus people in the world. This isn't some claim to the worn out cliche of perfectly imperfect (that makes me want to yak) this is a realization that none of has attained perfection and we have all failed along the way. That alone should give us some higher understanding of others and an allotment of patience for when someone does err.

The things that can't be undone, unseen, unfelt (is that a word?) happen to give us alertness to something that is awry or needs changed in our lives. If it hurts, don't do it. If you didn't do it, don't let someone else do it to you. There is little to nothing that we can do to change the actions of others, but we can certainly learn from that mistake and not make the same one if we see the problem or the issue with that behavior or action. The only course of action is to move forward with the knowledge that things will never be the same, but that they aren't the same for a reason. Grow from it, learn from it, move on. Sounds simple enough, but it is not so easy in practice. Those memories, those 'what ifs' are haunting. The questions that can't be answered are the hardest ones to ask.

Be careful in what you do, what you say and how you act. Nothing can be undone. Some things are far more permanent and the impact more lasting than others. Until this life gets an 'undo' button, we are all fallible and this life is indelible.