August 9, 2025
Some days the “Thought of the Day and Question of the Day” go hand in hand like coffee and quiet. Other days they meet up like a cat hairball and your bare foot at 5:30 a.m. Today is both. James Joyce invites us to see mistakes as gateways to discovery. Our question asks us to name the smallest thing that can wreck a perfectly good day.
I think Joyce would have understood the connection.
Thought of the Day: Mistakes are the portals of discovery. — James Joyce
Mistakes are not fun in the moment. They are awkward, uncomfortable, sometimes even costly. But they are also the hidden teachers in our lives. They shove us into new territory we might have tiptoed around forever.
The trouble is that in real life the “portal of discovery” rarely looks like a shining magical doorway. More often it feels like the clumsy moment you spill coffee on your shirt before a meeting, or the instant you realize you forgot to hit “save” before your computer froze. In my experience, the best discoveries are the ones that first felt like disasters.
I once thought of mistakes as detours. Now I see them as secret paths that do not appear until you mess up. Sometimes the lesson is practical, like “always check the expiration date before pouring milk into cereal.” Other times the lesson is bigger, like “maybe the story you are trying to write needs a different ending entirely.”
The point is, if we can resist the urge to label a mistake as the end of the road, we might find it is just the beginning. And often, those beginnings are far more interesting than whatever we had planned.
If you want proof that mistakes can become fuel, read this reflection on why failure is not the end or this post about having problems.
Question of the Day: What’s the smallest thing that can completely ruin your day?
For me, it is stepping in cat vomit as I walk down the stairs in the dark. There is no elegant recovery from that. There is no “shake it off” moment. One second I am half asleep, thinking about the coffee I am about to make, and the next I am frozen on the stairs, foot raised, trying not to track this nightmare into the carpet.
The thing about small disasters is how quickly they can snowball. Now I am cleaning my foot, the stairs, and the floor, while the cat watches me with zero regret. The coffee is cold by the time I get to it. My mood has shifted from “peaceful morning” to “full-on crime scene cleanup.”
But here is where the Thought of the Day circles back in. Stepping in cat vomit is unpleasant, but it also reminds me to slow down, to turn on the light, and to stop assuming I know what the day will bring. It forces me to reset. Sometimes that reset is grumpy. Sometimes it is the nudge I need to approach the rest of the day with a little humor.
So now I am curious. What is your version of the cat vomit moment? What tiny thing flips your day upside down?
Your Turn
What is the smallest thing that can ruin your day and has it ever taught you something later? Share your answer in the comments or join the daily email to get tomorrow’s Thought of the Day and Question of the Day delivered to your inbox.