Not Every Mistake Must Be Pointed Out

Yesterday, I wrote about my grandpa making a beautiful menu card for my aunt’s wedding. The one part I left out: There was a typo on it. The word “champignon” was spelled with an extra “i.”

When I first spotted the error, I was about to point it out. Just out of habit and my own obsession with grammar. Then, I thought better of it. “Who’ll benefit from this?” I asked myself.

My grandpa? No. He already has an excellent command of the German language. I’m sure it really was just a typo. The guests? It wasn’t like you couldn’t understand the word anymore. It was still perfectly clear. And the champignon sauce tasted just as brilliant. I doubt it’d even have made me look smart. Perhaps petty, if anything.

So the answer to that question was obvious: “No one.” Ergo, I said nothing. And lo and behold, no one else said anything for the whole evening either.

Sometimes, grace means looking at the essence instead of the details. Not every mistake must be pointed out.

Nik

Niklas Göke writes for dreamers, doers, and unbroken optimists. A self-taught writer with more than a decade of experience, Nik has published over 2,000 articles. His work has attracted tens of millions of readers and been featured in places like Business Insider, CNBC, Lifehacker, and many others. Nik has self-published 2 books thus far, most recently 2-Minute Pep Talks. Outside of his day job and daily blog, Nik loves reading, video games, and pizza, which he eats plenty a slice of in Munich, Germany, where he resides.