Before you become wise, you must be naïve. Everyone makes painful mistakes. It’s how human beings learn and adapt. Throughout my years attending High School, I’m sure every one of my fellow students have made plenty of mistakes and carried a personal burden of grief and despair. .

I’ve probably said hello to the majority of them, maybe even nodded or smiled. Regardless of our interactions within the school building, I can rationally say that I don’t genuinely know a single one of them. Maybe it’s because of my lack of effort (or my even larger deficit of concern), but the one constant I can rely on to unify us is human error.

Everyone makes mistakes, by purpose or accident, with good or bad intentions, receiving consequences deserved or left unjustified. I believe it’s these mistakes that make us who we are and mold our character. We can’t necessarily choose what goes wrong or the impact our actions may have on other people, but we can choose the lessons we learn. We can choose to repeat or abstain the past, listen or ignore our peers, follow a predetermined fate or believe in a chaotic future.

In our beautiful, blinding youth, most choose to stubbornly believe that they alone know best. But I think that in this belief, people in fact deceive and lie to themselves. As often as others tend to underestimate the paths we may have walked in our lives; more often we ignore what others tell us, convinced we know best and eventually causing unnecessary strain.

In the senior year of high school, students are still ridiculously young. In a few years we’ve developed a sense of conscious awareness unlike any previous phase in our life. We’ve started a journey of constant evolution, and are only beginning to accumulate the emotional scars and blessings we’ll receive in life.

With these mistakes, the manner in which we heal and learn is completely individual. But, it is this crucial perception that dictates our approach and outcomes in life. Maintaining personal veracity, in combination with allowing others who have similar experiences to be an influence, can be an overwhelming force in preventing superfluous pain and a tremendous aide in personal growth.

But allowing what I have written above to be true, it is the single-handedly most awe-inspiring statement to admit that I do not know any of my peers. Whether you’d consider me a friend, an enemy or a complete stranger; I do not know the mistakes you have made, the trials you’ve lived, or the wonderful moments of laughter and happiness you’ve shared with others. I will probably never know. I do know that you’ve been in pain, that you’ve had moments of unyielding pleasure, and in that, I have a sense of care and love for each and every single human being. The mere fact that you are human, that you will and can learn, validates my affection for you