I epxlianed to him taht I was not to blmae and that he souhld still be able to uesdnatnrd waht he was rdgnieg due to the inrcedilbe pweor of the hmuan mnid. 

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearchr at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. 

The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.

This is bcuseae the human mind deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe. Amzanig huh! 

Okay okay, I’ll spell properly now ...I hope.

Blmae, I mean blame, is a funny thing.

A priest, who will remain nameless, said to me: “I’m sick of people coming up to me in the street and asking me if I am you!”

“Well how do you know it is ‘me’ they are talking about?” I asked. 

“Because they ask ‘Are you that priest that writes in the paper?’ I tell them ‘Of course not! I wouldn’t write that rubbish!’” 

Quite shocked, I said to him “Oh, you shouldn’t say that, you should stick up for me. In fact, if you want, you can even pretend to be me and take the credit.” 

“The credit?” he replied “More like the blame!”  

I said to him “Well I never say bad things to people when people think I’m you!” 

“Well how do you know it is ‘me’ they are talking about?” he asked.

I replied “Because they ask ‘Are you that priest that gives the long boring sermons?’ But don’t worry, I always stick up for you. I tell them that they are actually quite short sermons and that they only seem like eternity.” 

As the spelling mistakes above attempt to explain, it is not the end of the world if you make a small mistake, even if you make lots of them. 

I’ve been reading “flavour of the month” conservative author Dr Jordan Peterson’s new book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.

Some rules are weird such as Rule 5: “Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them” and Rule 11: “Do not bother children while they are skateboarding”.

However, I find Rule 6 profound: “Set your house in order before you criticise the world”.

It is similar to Jesus’ advice “… first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

In the post-mortem investigation of the Columbine High School massacre of 1999 it was discovered in the diaries of the perpetrators that they saw everyone else at school as scum that did not even deserve to continue to live. 

It is a wonderful thing to try and stretch yourself and improve yourself, but never at the cost of seeing everyone else as bad or beneath you.

My favourite rule in Jordan Peterson’s book is Rule 9: “Assume the person you are listening to knows something you don’t”.

My best ideas are often stolen from someone else’s wise advice to me. 

GK Chesterton said “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly”.

Attempting something imperfectly is usually better than making no attempt at all, and the amount of times you still get your message across, even if you make mistakes, is absolutely amzanig!