sins of omission and commission

My mother, who was not a Sunday-go-to-meetin' religious person, once observed that she preferred sins of commission to sins of omission.

And, roughly speaking, you can see her point: Sins of commission teach. Sins of omission gnaw.

Of course, anyone might get all Jesuitical and parsing about the matter, but in general, I see her point. At a personal level, there is nothing like a fuck-up to drive the lesson home.

I once went to a Zen Buddhist monastery in pursuit of whatever it is people who go to monasteries are in pursuit of. I came away devastated (for a while) by the outcome. Today, I wouldn't trade that experience for all the tea in China.

And I suppose there are myriad other examples.