A thinks-he's-tough-guy in history comes to power and, despite the failure of an earlier thinks-he's-tough-guy in history, thinks he can successfully invade Russia.
Yet another teacher gets involved with yet another underage student and tries to run off with the student.
Yet another girl becomes a teenage mother herself, despite seeing friends struggle with teenage parenthood, not the least of which has to be loss of freedom, and despite perhaps seeing her mom struggle with single motherhood. Yet another boy becomes a teenage father, despite seeing other such dads dogged by child-support authorities and baby mama drama.
Yet another young man thinks he can engage in risky criminal behavior without it resulting in a prison bid.
You reach for that credit card or apply for a new one, one more time ... even though you have suffered for years from the awful consequences of bad financial stewardship.
Sigh.
We just don't seem to realize that, to use an old term, "fat meat is greasy." In other words, it seems we have to find out things the hard way.
It used to be blamed on teenagers. Being youthful, they have this sense of invulnerability, it was said. Even though their friends suffered some gnarly consequences after doing something foolish, they think things will be different in their case.
My husband speaks often of how, growing up in the tough Sonya Quarters in Alexandria, La., he saw all too many buddies and classmates suffer the consequences of such mistakes as substance abuse and sexual promiscuity. So he didn't take those particular chances.
Me? I'm sure I learned from someone else's mistakes. But, somehow, foremost in my mind are mistakes I saw others making, yet thought I could dip myself into the same boneheaded behavior and things would come out differently. (I'll decline to recite those mistakes. I tell a lot of my business in this space, but hey, there comes a limit.)
So why do we do that? Why do we -- young and old -- seem to be so bad at learning from mistakes?
Come to find out, I'd missed that old Massachusetts Institute of Technology study (well, from the late 2000s) that reveals that we learn more from successes than we do from mistakes.
"Whoever said that you can and should learn from your mistakes made a mistake," writes Thomas Oppong, who referred to the MIT study in a January 2016 piece at medium.com. "Humans are better at learning after doing something right rather than after doing something wrong."
But then you grew up hearing that "a burned child will fear fire." Well in my case it was hot clothing and hair-curling irons, the scars of which I still bear. I've learned from some failures.
Movies such as Bill Murray's Groundhog Day and Tom Cruise's Edge of Tomorrow certainly teach the value of failure. In the former movie, Murray kept reliving the same day until he got his life -- and romance -- right. In the latter, Tom Cruise's soldier character kept dying, only to wake up and relive the day he's sent out to fight some nasty aliens ... and, therefore, ferret out a way to kick their rear ends.
"Ten Excellent Ways How Failure Can Be More Beneficial to You Than Success" is a piece by Darren Roberts at Squarewheels.com, a team-building and leadership-training website. Some of the advantages listed: It gives us experience. It builds character. It makes you be honest with yourself.
I suspect that we learn best from our own mistakes, instead of mistakes made by others. Chances are few of us will try to invade a giant country with bitterly cold winters; luckily the majority of us won't engage in inappropriate relationships with underage people. Sadly, it appears there will be more teenage mothers, more young criminals and, as the economy continues to change, there will be more people trying to live beyond shrunken means.
The good thing is that as long as our mistakes don't get us dead, there's a chance. There's a chance to learn from them -- and our successes -- and better ourselves, turn our lives into triumphant testaments forged in good, bad and ugly, and serve as role models for up-and-comers who themselves must learn the game of life.
In a way, we all have our Groundhog Day.
You'll probably learn from mistyping this long email address:
hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style on 04/30/2017