NFIB

All I Really Need to Know I Learned From a 7-year-old
05/ 28/ 2004

by Harvey King

I was digging through my desk drawer the other day when I came upon a folder in which I placed some notes I wrote to my children when they were younger to give to them some appropriate day in the future. (My wife is wonderful about such thoughtful gestures and has a thick book of such notes. Mine is an embarrassingly thin file.)

As I read through a note I wrote to my son when he was 7-years-old (he’s now 13), I realized once more how much my children have taught me about running a small business -- and about life.

The note was written in early February after he had received a videogame player for Christmas and had spent every free moment since (of which, because of his modern, over-scheduled life, he has surprisingly little) trying to conquer the game Mario 64. The game involves a process of winning gold stars; each allows the player to advance a little deeper into the game, until at last you get to free the princess and have bragging rights over all other second graders.

He had been tenacious in his quest to master the game, earning 70 stars by the time I wrote the note. Yet on this day, my son decided to learn that the letters E-R-A-S-E spell the word "erase." For no reason other than a 7-year-old’s curiosity, he decided to discover what would happen if he clicked the "erase" option on his game. And what do you know? All of his gold stars vanished. Poof.

I heard about it later that night when I arrived home: The initial disbelief. The tears of loss and grief. The consoling big sister (even she had pity this day). The motherly hug (despite her dislike of videogames).

And then, in the contemporary equivalent of getting back up on the horse after being thrown off, my son went back to the game with a vengeance. By the time I arrived home from the office the next day, he had regained 17 stars, a feat that had taken him nearly a month to accomplish the first time he tried. By the next day, he had caught up with his pre-erasure level.

In the note I will give him one day, I wrote, "When you mess up, you don’t always have to start over from scratch. The knowledge you gain from mistakes, even the stupid ones, is like steps on a ladder that can provide you a leg-up for your next attempt."

When I read that note, it reminded me of the lessons I have learned from my children. For I lose stars every day, and despite the frustration and disappointment that come with such loss, I need to remember that with the determination of a 7-year-old, it is easier to win them back the second time.

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This article originally appeared in the June/July 2004 issue of MyBusiness magazine.

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