its very interesting to observe how my students do their sums. among all my students, although they are from different background and studying in different schools, they have a common habit: when they commit some careless mistakes, they will correct their solutions by canceling the wrong numbers/steps throughout the whole sum, this is despite the fact that they do not have enough space to write anymore and further cancellation and correction will make the whole page looks really messy and uncomprehensionable (is there such a word? o.O). they are just unwilling to rewrite everything from scratch again..

how similar we are with them! how many times did we try to salvage the situation by changing ourselves, changing the environment, or even changing the others? we try and try but how successful is that? how often did we strike out the thought of restarting from scratch again just because we have put in so much into the past that we just can't bear to let go, even thou we know that it not possible to return to the past anymore?

why can't we just let go of the past and start afresh again?