Does there have to be a lesson here?

I've noticed a trend—in work retrospectives, in personal conversations—that we often default to the assumption that every misstep, every mishap, every mistake comes with a neatly packaged lesson. The impulse makes sense; it's comforting to think we can distill chaos into tidy wisdom.

But sometimes, things simply go wrong. Does there have to be a lesson here, or did something just happen?

Not every error signals a flaw in character or exposes a deeper pattern of behavior. Not every incident needs to become a teachable moment. By obsessively searching for lessons in every failure, we risk creating a culture of unnecessary anxiety, self-doubt, and hesitation.

Instead, we need to get better at discerning quickly: Which mistakes genuinely warrant investigation, reflection, and learning? And which ones can we simply accept, shrug off, and move past without unnecessary fuss?

Life is messy. Projects stumble. Humans err. Wisdom isn't just knowing how to learn from mistakes—it's knowing when there's no lesson at all.