This story is
about a famous research scientist who had made several very important medical
breakthroughs. He was being interviewed by a newspaper reporter who asked him
why he thought he was able to be so much more creative than the average person.
What set him so far apart from others?
He responded that,
in his opinion, it all came from an experience with his mother that occurred
when he was about two years old. He had been trying to remove a bottle of milk
from the refrigerator when he lost his grip on the slippery bottle and it fell,
spilling its contents all over the kitchen floor—a veritable sea of milk!
When his mother
came into the kitchen, instead of yelling at him, giving him a lecture, or
punishing him, she said, “What a great and wonderful mess you have made! I have
rarely seen such a huge puddle of milk. Well, the damage has already been done.
Would you like to get down and play in the milk for a few minutes before we
clean it up?”
Indeed, he did.
After a few minutes, his mother said, “You know, whenever you make a mess like
this, eventually you have to clean it up and restore everything to its proper
order. So, how would you like to do that? We could use a sponge, a towel, or a
mop. Which do you prefer?” He chose the sponge and together they cleaned up the
spilled milk.
His mother then
said, “You know, what we have here is a failed experiment in how to effectively
carry a big milk bottle with two tiny hands. Let’s go out in the back yard and
fill the bottle with water and see if you can discover a way to carry it
without dropping it.” The little boy learned that if he grasped the bottle at
the top near the lip with both hands, he could carry it without dropping it.
What a wonderful lesson!
This renowned
scientist then remarked that it was at that moment that he knew he didn’t need
to be afraid to make mistakes. Instead, he learned that mistakes were just
opportunities for learning something new, which is, after all, what scientific
experiments are all about. Even if the experiment “doesn’t work,” we usually
learn something valuable from it.
Author Unknown
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