As children, no adult prepares for you for being an adult and what the real world is like. Adults often say “You want to make the most of being a child” but it is never explained why. As a teenager the real world is already beginning to seep in and there are small things you can look back on as an adult as a hint to what the real world is and how things could have been done differently.

As an adult if mistakes were not made there would be nothing to look back on, on how to improve as an adult. When an adult makes a mistake there is a conscious decision on what to do next, either the mistake can be ignored or the mistake can be looked on as something not to do again and how to behave in the future.

There is no handbook to being an adult or how to behave in front of people in different age groups. At school it is easier to know how our peers will behave to certain things and how to behave around our peers and what is and is not acceptable. However as an adult it is inevitable that we will meet adults of different age ranges from different backgrounds and cultures. For example in the workplace, in the supermarkets, in church, in clubs etc…

Something that our own peers may find funny is someone else from another age group that may be offended by and it is a fine line to walk along. The first years of being an adult are a stumbling block of mistakes and things that have been said or done we wished we could have undone or hiding our head in our hands thinking why did I do that.

No matter how we look at the mistakes we have made, if we regret something it is a mistake, the lessons that we learn from making mistakes is how to be around other people, how not to speak to other people, what is an acceptable topic of conversation and what isn’t and how we present ourselves to others.

In effect the mistakes that we make are there to help us to fit into society and how we present ourselves in society. Sometimes thinking back about mistakes we have made can make us cringe, they can be painful or just make us feel really awkward.

Mistakes teach us to think about our actions before we do something and whether the thing that we’re going to do next, whether it will have consequences, whether it is right or wrong and it shapes the moral compass of a human being.