Mistakes

I finished How I Met Your Mother’s season 1 last night. I liked that episode about the mistakes, when Ted said that sometimes, you just have to do something even though you know it’s a mistake. I know he and Robin don’t end up together in the end, but I know Ted would have always wondered about her if he hadn’t made the mistake of being with her. It’s better to make a mistake and know for sure that it is a mistake than forever wonder about it, as Lily said rather confusingly to Ted but which made sense to me, scarily enough, which went:

Yes, it’s a mistake. I know it’s a mistake but there are certain things in life where you know it’s a mistake but you don’t really know it’s a mistake because the only way to really know it’s a mistake is to make the mistake and look back and say yeah, that was a mistake. So really, the bigger mistake would be to not make the mistake because then you’d go your whole life not really knowing if something is a mistake or not.

Then later on, he’s supposed to meet the “perfect girl” according to his list – wants kids, plays tennis, etc etc, which a dating site found for him. But then he goes home and has this conversation with Marshall.

Marshall: Ted just had a huge date! How’d it go, dude?
Ted: I didn’t go.
Marshall: What? Why?
Ted: I changed my mind. I don’t wanna meet her.
Marshall: Why? She sounds perfect.
Ted: I don’t want perfect. I want Robin.
Marshall: Oh God not this again! Ted, it’s a mistake!
Ted: Maybe. But it’s a mistake I have to make.

If we don’t make mistakes, we wouldn’t know how to make things right. This one was said in Thirteen Going On Thirty.

I made a lot of mistakes in my life, but now I’m glad I made them, because as you grow older, you don’t regret the things you did, but the ones you did NOT do.