A recent trip back to my hometown provided an opportunity to do something I don’t often have the chance to do very much anymore: parallel park. Particularly within the city limits of St. Louis–or any major city for that matter–drivers ought to know how to do it if they have any hope whatsoever of parking their car anywhere near their destination.

It’s a skill that some consider obscure and has thus fallen into the category of lost arts, but the sense of satisfaction when it is successfully achieved makes it so worthwhile…especially if someone’s watching, whether as a passenger or an onlooker. It got me thinking of the many life lessons that are attached to being able to parallel park successfully.

The fear factor alone might prevent a lot of drivers from even attempting on-the-street parking. That’s because the length of one’s vehicle is often exaggerated in one’s mind. Those lacking the confidence to parallel park simply assume that the available space is not big enough to accommodate one’s vehicle. This is not just my opinion, but rather is a cognitive bias called “anchoring,” in which one piece of information—whether true or not—is used to make subsequent decisions.

This thought then led me to wondering how often groundless fears keep us humans from attempting something. I still remember going for my CDL license a few years ago and feeling the fear of having to back an 18-wheeler down a lane that was two hundred feet long. It took jack-knifing it numerous times before I figured out just how useful those side mirrors could be.

And when it came time to learn how to parallel park the behemoth, I felt defeated before I even tried. The task didn’t even seem possible. I didn’t know what or who would give up on me first: the tractor’s clutch or the instructor.

There have been times when my tenacity—ok, stubbornness—has served me well, and this was one of them. Thank goodness for those orange cones, for they were both forgiving and expendable. But that age-old adage, “Practice, practice, practice!” is what is it ultimately took. That, and an instructor who had the patience of Job.

In the case of parallel parking, seriously, what is the very worst that can happen… that success isn’t achieved on the first try? That’s not an excuse for not trying. Besides, success in anything rarely occurs on the first try. Even if it were, would any learning really occur? Thomas Edison, who had more than ten thousand failures when trying to fashion a light bulb that would run on electricity said that ‘he HAD to succeed, because he finally ran out of things that wouldn’t work.’

Truly, to start something all over is a rather minuscule consequence when you really think about it. I find that having to re-do things happens fairly often in life….at least it does in mine. I’ve learned that starting over and doing something right is better than trying to gloss over a mistake, not to mention being a time-saver in the long run.

I remember many of the sewing and macrame projects I had to restart so that I could remedy a mistake I had made, and the lessons I learned in the process. In the end, they were all worth it. After all, “to err is human, to forgive, Divine.” Maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves.

I never imagined that parallel parking would parallel life itself, but I suppose it really does–lessons, especially. Even to this day, my 30-something-year-old daughter thanks me for being adamant about her learning how to parallel park, as well as to stop and go up a steep hill in a car with manual transmission when she was learning to drive. There are certain skills worth having.

Minds are like parachutes; they don’t work unless they’re opened. Imagine all the opportunities that can be ours if only we’re willing to try!