Mind The Gap

Stop. Look down. Traverse.

Uncomfortable Visual Expression by Tânia Falcão

Miiiind the Gap.

Miiiind the Gap.

If there is a distinctive trait of London — besides the King, or the Queen before him, the black taxis, Big Ben, London Bridge, Buckingham Palace or Covent Garden — it is the London Underground. The Tube.

You know the voice. A calm, recorded warning about the small space between the train and the platform edge. Don’t look at it. Don’t think about it. Just step over it, quickly, and get on with your journey.

I want to propose something different.

What if, every time we made a mistake, instead of stepping over the gap as fast as possible, we stopped. Looked down. And actually stared into it — the way you would if someone told you there might be crocodiles down there. For me, cockroaches would work better. I could easily swim with crocodiles. Cockroaches, on the other hand...

Not to be afraid. To see. To know exactly what’s in the space between what happened and what we’re willing to admit happened.

Because that gap is where everything important lives. And most of us spend our entire lives stepping over it as quickly as humanly possible.

A few weeks ago I sat down with two other writers — MaddaMom and Olga Rodrigo — for a live conversation about mistakes. Skipping the woo-woo, as we called it. Facing the truth that we hate making mistakes but love what they can teach us, if we let them.

And in that conversation, almost without planning to, I said something out loud that I had never said quite so plainly before.

I am 61. I come from a generation where love was heavily romanticised — where couples played games. Hide and seek. Strong and silent. I’m playing strong because boys don’t like women who are whiny. I’m very sad she didn’t call but I have to perform, because I’m a man.

In relationship after relationship, across years, I never stated — at the very beginning — exactly what I was willing to give. And what I was willing to accept. And, just as importantly, what I was not willing to accept.

This led to so many mistakes. So many misunderstandings. So many relationships that deeply needed correction glasses to be fully seen and better enjoyed — or dismissed sooner, because I could have understood that we were simply in different lanes. It was always about never stating the terms. And for decades, I never dedicated enough time to understand it.

Last month, I had several conversations with my sons. Both of them are starting new relationships — different ages, different situations, the same dilemma. And I found myself saying: go and have a coffee. Now is the moment. Say what you want. Say what you’re willing to give. Set the boundaries of what is acceptable and what is not. Because when you do that, you’re also telling her — you can do this too. You’re giving her permission to do the same.

And as I said it — to my own children, decades after I needed to hear it myself — I saw it. The whole pattern. All at once. A single sentence I had never said out loud, to myself, until that moment.

A sentence that, finally, had been integrated — because I was accessing it naturally.

The woo-woo problem

There is a culture around mistakes that I find deeply unhelpful.

You have seen it. It lives on social media, in motivational podcasts, in the kind of content that arrives with a sunrise photo and a sans-serif font. Mistakes are normal. Accept them. Embrace them. They are how you grow.

It sounds right. It produces almost no effect.

And the reason is simple: telling yourself something is not the same as understanding it. The brain does not change through declarations. It changes through experience, through repetition, through the slow, uncomfortable work of actually sitting with something difficult long enough to see it clearly. The woo-woo skips that part entirely — it jumps from mistake happened to mistake accepted without ever passing through the gap. Without ever looking down.

In our live conversation, Olga said something that has stayed with me: mistakes are information, but the access to it depends on how much you are in touch with yourself. That is the part the motivational content never addresses. Not whether you accept the mistake. Whether you are honest enough with yourself to actually read it. And this requires strength — strength that sometimes we simply do not have. There are hard moments in life, and this is what we have to accept without punishment. And wait for a better moment.

Women and the wall

And then there is the question of women specifically.

The relationship between women and mistakes is not the same as the relationship between people and mistakes. It is heavier, more pervasive, more personal. For women, a mistake does not just mean I did something wrong. It tends to mean I am wrong. The mistake becomes identity. The error becomes evidence of a fundamental inadequacy — of not being good enough, careful enough, smart enough, composed enough.

The pressure to be perfect means the gap between making a mistake and seeing it clearly is often filled not with honest analysis but with shame. And shame, as we have established in these pages before, is not a tool for growth. It is not a glass ceiling. It is a wall.

You cannot see what you are too ashamed to look at.

Three things

So what actually works?

Three things emerged from our conversation that I keep returning to.

The first is naming. Not accepting — naming. There is a significant difference. Accepting a mistake can be passive, even avoidant — a way of moving on without moving through. Naming it requires precision. What exactly happened? What did I do, or not do? What was the pattern? A named mistake is a known mistake. And a known mistake is one you can actually do something about.

The second is the image of a baby learning to walk.

Watch a baby fall. Watch them fall again. And again. There is no shame in it — not yet, not before the world teaches them there should be. The baby falls, processes what happened, adjusts, and tries again. Not because falling is comfortable. Because getting up is more interesting than staying down. That is not a metaphor for toxic positivity. It is a description of how learning actually works — iterative, physical, unsentimental.

The third came from MaddaMom — the most practical tool I have encountered: the Pomodoro approach to mistakes. Set a timer. Dedicate intentional, bounded time to looking at the mistake — deeply, honestly, without distraction. Why did this happen? And, more importantly, as Olga stated: what for? What do I want to get out of understanding it? And when the timer stops — stop. No more ruminating. No more circling. The time was given. The work was done. Or to be done in another Pomodoro time.

I spent decades stepping over the gap — in my relationships and in other things. Quickly, efficiently, without looking down. Each time telling myself it was strength. That it was moving forward. Each time leaving behind something I needed to see.

The sentence I finally said to my sons — state the terms, from the beginning — was not new information. I had known it, in some form, for years. What was new was that I had finally integrated it. Not because someone told me to accept my mistakes. Because I had, at last, dedicated enough time to actually look at them.

Here is what I know now.

The gap is not the danger. The danger is never looking into it at all.

The London Underground tells you to mind the gap because it is a void — empty, dark, something to be avoided. But the gap between a mistake and its understanding is not empty. It is full. Full of information, of pattern, of the quiet truth about what you actually want and what you have been too ashamed or too busy or too afraid to say out loud.

Mind the gap. But not the way they tell you to.

Stop at it. Look down. Stay long enough to see what’s there.

And then — when the timer goes off, when the moment comes, when the strength finally arrives — step across it. Not over it. Through it.

To traverse. That is the whole point.