The Spilt Milk

This is a story about a famous research scientist who had made several
very important medical breakthroughs. He was being interviewed by a
newspaper reporter who asked him why he thought he was able to be so much
more creative than the average person. What set him so far apart from
others?

He responded that, in his opinion, it all came from an experience with his
mother that occurred when he was about two years old. He had been trying to
remove a bottle of milk from the refrigerator when he lost his grip on the
slippery bottle and it fell, spilling its contents all over the kitchen
floor—a veritable sea of milk!

When his mother came into the kitchen, instead of yelling at him, giving
him a lecture, or punishing him, she said, "Robert, what a great and
wonderful mess you have made! I have rarely seen such a huge puddle of
milk. Well, the damage has already been done. Would you like to get down
and play in the milk for a few minutes before we clean it up?"

Indeed, he did. After a few minutes, his mother said, "You know, Robert,
whenever you make a mess like this, eventually you have to clean it up and
restore everything to its proper order. So, how would you like to do that?
We could use a sponge, a towel, or a mop. Which do you prefer?" He chose
the sponge and together they cleaned up the spilled milk.

His mother then said, "You know, what we have here is a failed experiment
in how to effectively carry a big milk bottle with two tiny hands. Let's go
out in the back yard and fill the bottle with water and see if you can
discover a way to carry it without dropping it." The little boy learned
that if he grasped the bottle at the top near the lip with both hands, he
could carry it without dropping it. What a wonderful lesson!

This renowned scientist then remarked that it was at that moment that he
knew he didn't need to be afraid to make mistakes. Instead, he learned that
mistakes were just opportunities for learning something new, which is,
after all, what scientific experiments are all about. Even if the
experiment "doesn't work," we usually learn something valuable from it.