Learning to Embrace One's Mistakes

When you look around a room, it's usually easy to tell who is confident just by the body language he or she has.  However, people encounter plenty of situations each day that often can bring down their level of self pride.

In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, confidence is taken to a whole new level by Hester Prynne.  Because she committed adultery and bore an illegitimate child, she is forced to wear a scarlet "A" on her chest so everyone she sees will know what she has done.  Although most people would be ashamed of this sign of indecency and try to hide it, Hester proudly wears the A on her dress as she steps into public view after leaving the prison.  She knows that there is no point in letting the criticism of the crowd surrounding her bother her and decides to just accept the past for what it is.

I feel as though everyone can learn an important lesson from Hester: Don't let actions of the past bring you down once they can't be changed.  Sure, we all regret things like doing so poorly on a test that we were just 1% away from failing (does the Babylon Revisited test ring a bell for anyone?) or liking someone that we end up realizing is a jerk, but at the same time, we cannot let that bring us down for the rest of our lives.  If you spend too much time reflecting on what you've done wrong in your life, you won't have time to do anything right.  People make mistakes that will haunt them for the rest of their lives, but they can't be taken back once they happen. The only thing you can do is embrace them and learn lessons along the way, as Hester did.