In my day job as a product manager, bugs are a regular part of life. Typically defined as an error or flaw in the software code that leads to unintended or unexpected results, bugs, as "mistakes," have a negative connotation. In some (albeit rare) cases, though, those unintended results actually bring unanticipated benefits -- it's a feature, not a bug!
No matter how much we plan, shit happens. We all make mistakes. And mistakes are seen as something to be corrected -- if we find a bug in our software, we need to go in and fix it. If we make a mistake in our lives, we need to figure out how to unmake it. But what if, in some cases, those bugs turned out to be features, to lead to unexpected behaviour that yet was beneficial to our users? Should we not then embrace them, understand them, explore how we might even extend the functionality we unintentionally created?
This happens to me in sewing all the time -- I make a LOT of mistakes. And sometimes, especially when sewing clothes, those mistakes need to be corrected, or the clothes won't fit. Those mistakes are great because I learn from them, but because they've messed up my project and I have to fix them, they still have that negative connotation.
In some cases, though, those mistakes result in an opportunity to do something new -- unintended but beneficial. When I was working on this piece, I made a few mistakes -- I wanted all those little crosses to be perfect, but there are a few places where I messed up the rows. And then when I was trimming down the border, I accidentally cut some of the fabric in the wrong place.
I thought about pulling out the misaligned stitches and redoing them, or figuring out a way to draw attention away from them, but then I changed my mind. What if instead I intentionally spotlighted them, turned them into a feature instead of a bug? So I did. Same thing with my accidental cuts on the binding -- I stitched up those holes with a contrasting color. And now, whether I or anyone else actually likes it or not, those mistakes have been turned into intentional design decisions.
We are often told that it's okay to make mistakes because we can learn from them. I find this to be true. But I think it's also okay to make mistakes because sometimes, they actually bring you to exactly where you need to be.
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