Memories and traces of past mistakes should only serve as reminders NOT to make those mistakes again

I read a poem yesterday that made me cringe. Even though it was celebrating all the things that our human body can do, the whole thing screamed, “Ableist.” Why? Because even as it was talking about parts of our bodies and their uses – eyes, legs, ears and hands – there was no acknowledgment of people whose eyes do not see, ears do not hear, and legs that don’t walk.

 

And by not including such individuals, it was as though this poem is not for them. But it should be, because it was talking about “everyone.” Except that it didn’t.

 

What made me feel worse about recognizing this in the poem was knowing who the author of the poem was: Me.

 

That’s right. Even though I was Deaf (I lost my hearing when I was 13), I wrote a poem about the human body WITHOUT acknowledging that for some people, ears do not hear and eyes do not see, etc. In other words, I had written an ableist poem. Me, a Deaf person, someone who has had to fight ableism for years, writing something ableist.

 

 Tsk!

 

But this was not the first time in my life I had acted in such a way. I had also done something racist: Mocking an Asian person’s accent. I did something ageist: Making fun of an elderly person’s unsafe way of driving.

 

Yes, I have done these things in the past, and as much as I wish I could go back to that moment to slap myself in the face for being so thoughtless and stupid and hurtful, I am grateful that I learned how wrong it was to do these things. I have not done these things again ever since. I am not proud of those moments or of those mistakes in my past that hurt a lot of people, but I am proud of the fact that I am not that person anymore. And, yes, while I know I shouldn’t be so hard on myself because of the kind of family I was raised in and the type of role models I had for parents, that still doesn’t excuse my behavior in the past. As far as I’m concerned, though, all of that will stay in the past. I won’t allow it to come back into my present or my future.

 

That’s the thing about our past: It’s where we learn from our mistakes. Of course, I learned my lessons to correct those things soon after they happened, so at least now I can take comfort knowing that I will not knowingly make those mistakes again.

 

Just as I can look back at when I was an alcoholic and shake my head for ALL of the bad things I did while alcohol had muddled my thinking without hating myself now because I have not been an alcoholic for many years and now know better because my thinking is clearer, I look back on those unfortunate moments of my past and feel grateful that I learned to put a stop to those bad actions. Yes, they make me cringe even still, but I’m glad they didn’t continue.

 

That is, I think, what matters the most. Those actions happened once but they didn’t happen twice. As unfortunate and terrible as those mistakes are, I learned from them all – and that’s why I will not hold them against myself in the present day. The bottom line is that we should revisit the past to learn from our mistakes and take those cringe moments of past mistakes as a gentle reminder not to make those mistakes again.