The second time the tide comes in

On some stretches of the Bahrain coast, the sand you park on at four in the afternoon is under water by eight.

The first time it happens to someone, it is a mistake, and not a stupid one. They did not know how far the tide comes in. Now they do. It cost them wet shoes, a long walk and a tow from a patient stranger, and it bought them a piece of knowledge they could not have got any other way.

Parking on the same sand the following week is different. Nothing new happened there. The sea had already explained itself, and they chose not to listen.

We tend to blur the two, and it makes people timid. Someone who is afraid of being called stupid will avoid mistakes altogether, which in practice means avoiding anything unfamiliar. They stay where they know the ground. They launch nothing, try nothing, ask nothing that might reveal what they do not understand.

It helps to keep the words apart. A mistake is reality correcting you, which is a gift, if an irritating one. Stupidity is what happens afterwards, when the correction is ignored, explained away or blamed on the sea.

That distinction is useful far beyond the beach. A first product that nobody wanted, a price set too high, a message that confused the people it was meant for: each of these is a lesson with a fee attached. The fee is only wasted if the lesson is not collected.

So the goal is not to stop making mistakes. It is to make useful ones, ideally the kind that teach the people watching as well, and then to actually change course.

Get caught once. Just do not park in the same spot twice.