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(escucha el audio más de una vez para familiarizarte con los términos que
se introducen y explican)
Okay, who
here has never made a mistake?
The answer is, of course, no one.
Mistakes are not just a fact of life, they are an important part of the
learning process. However, regretting our mistakes day in and day out is
not healthy. We need to learn from them and then move on.
But do not take my word for it. One of America’s most famous and
influential writers and thinkers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said it much
better than I can.
Before we hear his famous statement, let’s talk about some words he used
in it.
When Emerson says “blunders and absurdities,” he simply means mistakes.
To do something filled with peaceful feelings is to do something “serenely.”
However, to be “encumbered” is the opposite. This means to be heavy and
loaded down with things. To Emerson, those “things” are past mistakes,
or as he calls them “your old nonsense.”
Now, here’s Bryan Lynn reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous quote.
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some
blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you
can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too
high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
To this day, many people use this quote to remind themselves not to
dwell in the past. When we dwell on something, we think about it
constantly. It becomes a distraction and keeps us from moving forward.
Now, this famous quote is useful, but it is a bit long. Perhaps you
would rather use a shorter, food-related idiom to help you move on and
forget your past mistakes.
In that case you can say, “Don’t cry over spilt milk.”
Well, you broke my heart (broke my heart),
When you said ‘goodbye’ (said goodbye)
But now the milk’s been spilt and you’re going to cry.
Early in the morning, you’re going to know that I was right...oh yeah...
When we “cry over spilt milk,” we are upset or sad about something bad
we have done that cannot be undone. This is another way of saying,
“What’s done is done. You cannot change the past. So stop thinking about
it.” If you spill milk, you cannot gather it back up and put it back in
the container.
We usually use the expression this way: “There's no use crying over
spilled milk.” “Spilled” or “spilt” are both okay. Some say, this
expression was first used in the mid-1600s in England. Back then, the
expression was “no weeping for shed milk.”
If old quotes and food expressions are still not working for you, there
are other ways to state this idea.
Let’s say past regrets continue to trouble your boss. You can use a word
we heard earlier – dwell. You might tell your boss: “Don’t dwell on the
past. You cannot change it, so why worry about it? You must move on and
look toward the future.”
This is all very polite. And the word “dwell” works well here as it is
somewhat formal. It’s good for a pep talk with your boss.
But what if one of your close friends is having the same kind of problem?
What if this friend has been stuck in the past for far too long? They
need a very different type of pep talk. It may be time for you to tell
your friend, “Get over it!”
Now, this could sound rude. After all, it is a wake-up call, a warning
to change for the better. And those can be hard for people to hear and
accept. But if someone has been crying over spilt milk for months, or
even years, a wake-up call is necessary.
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