the error of our ways, my daily bread

Today this email tag-line quote caught my attention because it spoke truth to me "From error to error one discovers the entire truth" — Sigmund Freud. The quote is in the world on several lists of notable quotes.

I am reminded that as a child I hoped to be quoted in Reader's Digest when I grew up. I have not scratched this notion off my life list. Such an honor represented wisdom and fame, today it represents a list that I value because of its accessibility.

These days I wish that my typos were less predictable and that the communist plot to make us all alike idea, inspired by the standardization of communication represented by the typewriter, never entered my 10 year old mind. I never learned to type and it is required of me daily. So I fumble and err along this path of life touching a keypad that is almost as foreign to me today as it was in mandatory typing class circa 1970. Hands and eyes do not coordinate and the mind is always full speed ahead so as never to be caught up.

My day job is full of root cause analysis of errors; and errors have been steadily informing my work because errors force me to see alternate views in data, process, behavior. So the error to error concept about the discovery of truth feels real. I valued its appearance in my day. Some days I just wish there were less errors to contend with. Other days I appreciate the skill sets of doctors, pilots, engineers, all the more because soft jobs can more safely survive if not error-free.

Some days I believe strongly that poems can not have errors? Those days are fewer and I claim less the error free moments in art. In art error reveals differently, right. Or is that a spin on errors begetting truth? Can a body politic learn lessons from errors in history or is error a perspective and therefore a version of truth? I believe that errors have nine lives much the same way my cat has 99 lives. Now that is an error the cat can live with until 100. I think poems attract me because no one can say with certainty if there is an error in a poem. Sometimes poems become quotable. So back to the quote, is its value conferred by the number of lists it has succeeded to reside within or the kindled at the root of its original inspiration and again each time it is read. Quotes definitely out spawn poems. Do error out spawn truth?

Well I have errors to recover from so blogging off now is my truth.