Mistakes.

I really enjoy the storytelling structure employed in How I Met Your Mother. Very often the show will have a theme, touched upon in Bob Saget's narration of his character's life 25 years prior. Sometimes the theme is subtle, while other times it's blatant, but it's all part of a rich tapestry.

In tonight's episode, following his 28th birthday, Ted(Josh Radnor) decides to let fate find him a soulmate. While I can tell you such a course of inaction rarely pays off, Ted's tale is different. A dating service that failed him in an earlier episode finally finds his perfect match. On paper she's perfect. She wants the same future he does, likes the same books, and eats the same food. However while waiting to meet her, he receives a call from Lily(Alyson Hannigan), who has gotten a flat tire miles away. She doesn't want her fiancée Marshall(Jason Segel) to know she borrowed his car, or why. Fortunately, Marshall is working late, helping Barney(Neil Patrick Harris) load mice into a cardboard box to prank an office rival. Ted, good guy that he is, catches a cab to meet her.

Ted learns that Lily is having second thoughts about the wedding, and wanted to try for an art fellowship in San Francisco. She explains, in trademark Hannigan double speak, how she needs to make a mistake in order to learn from making a mistake even if making that mistake is a mistake, and so on. She's off to New Haven to take a test, but has no intention of taking the fellowship. She just wants to see if she would have been able to make it as an artist. Ted protests, but ultimately she leaves him stranded. Unable to get Barney to pick him up and unwilling to tell Marshall what Lily is doing, Ted resorts to calling Robin(Cobie Smulders), his on-again off-again almost-love interest. Robin is wearing a hat, and explains that she tried to get highlights but the hairdresser ended up giving her tiger stripes. Ted teases her and tries to get her to take off the hat, telling her he's sure it will be ”Gr-r-reat!” There's also an obligatory reference to Highlights for Children, immortal denizen of dental offices nationwide. In the course of their conversation he discusses how great his blind date is going to be, and finds that Robin is the opposite of what he's looking for on paper. She's bored by his favorite book, hates lasagna, and while he wants two kids someday she's not sure she ever wants kids. Before dropping him off at the bar, she finally caves and takes her hat off to cheer him up. As she drives off, he imagines his wedding day to this perfect girl he has yet to meet, and longing glances toward Robin sitting in the pews looking sad.

Ted doesn't keep his date, and instead rushes home to the apartment he shares with Marshall and Lily. In a metaphorical conversation about milk, he learns that Lily could have gotten the fellowship if she wanted, but in doing so realized she did want to marry Marshall and couldn't give that up. He tells them that he's decided to pursue Robin once more, even though previous attempts have always ended in disaster. At this point, Saget begins a voiceover about the mistakes we make in life, and the show brilliantly shows clips from earlier in the episode of Lily touching a plate and recoiling, though she had been told it was hot, Ted drinking from a carton of milk without waiting for an answer to his inquiry whether it was any good, and Robin revealing her tiger stripes. Finally, they cut to Barney sitting in his office with a cardboard box, a hole chewed in its corner, and a mouse on his shoulder. Saget concludes that even when we know something is a mistake, sometimes we have to make it anyway.

As Mondays go, yesterday was pretty crummy. I'll spare everyone the boring details of my work life, but though I was able to hold together under pressure and resolve the various stressful challenges I faced, in hindsight I could clearly see the patterns of probability, the choices I had made last week that led to the scrambling and the negotiating today. Sometimes I'm afraid to take actions, for fear of making a mistake. Other times I wonder why I keep making mistakes. I don't always make the same mistakes, but even new ones trouble me. Never be afraid to make mistakes, to take chances and learn. It's the “Why do we fall?” question posed in Batman Begins. As I watched the kids run around at my cousin's this past weekend, some without jackets, many precariously climbing the side of their playset or crowding on to a swing meant for half as many children, I realized it's easier for kids to hurl themselves into life, get hurt, and bounce back better for the experience.

Fall. Then next time, avoid that step. That's life.