A Life Lesson

Mistakes are one of the most substantial things in our lives. We can learn a lot of lessons from each mistake we make. People are usually afraid of making mistakes; however, mistakes help them to become strong and mature.
Even if we listen to someone’s advice, or read books to know what is appropriate or inappropriate, we still cannot be sure to do everything exactly right unless we make mistakes. For these reasons, I think that the most important life lessons are learned by making mistakes.

The most important life lesson I have learned is not to tell lies to anyone. I think that expectations of parents are one of the reasons for children’s lies. When children make a decision about their future careers, parents have a big influence over their children. If the relationship between them is healthy, the results will be smooth. However, I didn’t have a good relationship with my parents. I didn’t tell my feelings to my parents. For this reason, I experienced a helpful situation which changed my future career. Whenever I hear someone who is willing to tell a lie, it brings back memories of my high school life. At that time, my mother had a lot of expectations about my major before I decided it in a high school. She wanted me to choose the Math-Science major because my brother studied the same major when he was in a high school, and he was very successful. She wanted me to be as good as my brother. Actually, my first year in a high school seemed as I was able to be successful in that major, and I was pretty much comfortable with science classes. In spite of my good grades in the high school, while I was preparing for matriculation at a private institution, I was not satisfied with my performance. I didn’t feel that I belonged to the science classes at the private institution because each student could deal with complex physics and chemistry problems, but I couldn’t. However, I was afraid of telling the truth to my parents, and instead of telling the truth I decided to tell a lie each time I got bad scores in the exams. After a while, my teacher called my mother to talk about my grades, and they told my mother that I didn’t have a capacity for Science. When my mother came back home, she told me that she had been disappointed by hearing my real grades from my teachers. She told me that I should not tell a lie in any situation. In addition, she explained that having no capacity for something was acceptable; however, telling a lie was unforgivable. After that embarrassing situation, I think I was lucky because I had an opportunity to change my major from Math-Science to Verbal-Math in the high school. I was comfortable with changing my major because I felt more confident in the new classes. The significance of that event changed my entire life. 

I learned from my experience that telling lies is just cheating myself and other people. At that time, I had not recognized its importance. I did not realize that telling lies damaged not only myself but also my parents, friends, and teachers. However, since that happened, I have not told a lie to anyone or to myself.  Now, I feel much better because there is nothing to worry about when I always tell the truth.