Forest Gump believes that life is like a box of chocolate. You’ll never know what you’ll get.

For me, life is like a set of icon. We have ‘New Blank Document’ icon for a start of your new life (my romantic idea of starting something is new place where nobody knows about your past. Moving to a new company or to a new house for example), we have ‘Print Preview’ icon to re-think and evaluate something that we are going to say or present to somebody else, we have “Copy” icon to re-do things that we thought we’ve done successfully in the past but from all of these icons there are one icon that we don’t have. The “Undo” icon.

A dear colleague of mine once said, “I wish I had an “Undo” icon. I’ve said things I should not say and I did things I should not do. I wish I could have an “Undo” icon so I could start thing all over again.” My reply was what about “Erase” or “Overwrite” icon, meaning say sorry to person that you hurt so we could start all over again. But he said that is not the same thing. It happened. Although the other party forgave you, you have left a mark or even scar. Some are deep and can’t easily be amended. Forgive but not forget.

And there are some “mistakes” that you can not amend. Like a divorce for example. How can you explain to your child that separating your life from their father or mother is something that you need to do to amend your life. Wouldn’t it be just simplerer (is there such word?) to “Undo” your life, never marry this person thus never have to see your child going through the painful process of divorce?

Or…get caught when you are cheating on your partner for another example. If you are the betrayer, will you wish that you would remember to erase the text message from your lover so your spouse did not have a chance to read it. Or will you wish that you didn’t to go to that place and meet your spouse’s friends there? And if you are the betrayed one, will you wish that your friends will have no second doubt and tell you the truth or will you wish otherwise? Will you wish that you know earlier or will you wish that you won’t know at all? Will an “Undo” icon help you?

Or…letting someone do something and resulted in fatality. Won’t you wish that you’ll have this magic “Undo” icon so your loved one will never get hurt?

In these cases, maybe no. You don’t need “Undo” icon to avoid painful experience. Because life it self is a set of mistakes and I strongly believe that things happened for a reason. Undo-ing something would prevent something else to happen. Too matrix to understand, uh?

In regards to something more solid but lighter, shopping for example. I sincerely wish that I have this “Undo” icon. One day I got so upset to find the exact same blouse I bought in a department store near to my office with 40% price cheaper. I was fuming! Same brands, same fabrics, same color…argh! I swear that I will never buy anything in that over priced department store ever again! Whenever we went there I always indoctrinating my girlfriends not to buy anything. Even in the sale season, their price is still higher.

However, a minute after repeating the same line over and over and my girlfriends suddenly found excuses to separate them selves from me (not out of bored, I hope!), suddenly three pairs of cute pajamas came out of nowhere. Oooohh…those tiny pajamas with friendly looking little elephants, giraffes and ducks look extremely inviting and the price is discounted!! I could imagine my chubby little boy in them looking as delicious as Baskin & Robbins’s Rocky Road! I was just trying to pick the “rightest” color (is it the yellow or the blue sky colors?) suddenly my girlfriends appeared from thin air. If I had known them better I would have thought that they are witches apparating in front of me with the wickest grin. “I thought that you will never buy anything ever again from this department store” they teased me cruelly. Ah, never say never. I wish I could Undo my mantra to them and change it to something like, “Never buy anything here, unless it’s force majeur” like this time. Easy!

Or after stubbornly being adventurous and unfortunately the food I ordered is really…blah! And suddenly my husband’s food look so much delicious. Hunger maybe one of the reason. But I sincerely wish at those times that I have this “Undo” button so my dear husband won’t have to always swap his food with mine. I know, selfish! So stop it!

In general, I found that if you have optimized your “Print Preview” icon, you won’t need an “Undo” icon. And there were many icons you can use before “Print Preview”, there are “Spell Check”, “Thesaurus”, “Hyphenation”…these three at least will help you to avoid in making mistakes. And if after using these three tools you still can not determine whether this word is right (this morning I spent 5 minutes trying to find the correct spell of beaurocrazy – as you can see, still can’t!), drop it! The word may not be existed in other language. Or it may not right after all. Lets use other which is more simplerer (oops…still got this red line under this word!)

I would not recommend the usage of automatic correction though. One of my ex-colleague told me a story when one of his friend activated the automatic spell check and resulted that our company names (He**) changed into ‘Hell’. Yikes!

So now I am trying to develop a habit in using these three very useful icon, plus another ten minutes to read through it again before I hit the icon “Print”. Or if it is a heavy thing, I spent 30 minutes to re-read it. And if I can’t find the correct word, drop it. And don’t loose sleep over it. There are still many words you can use to convey your message. By doing that I minimized my needs to use the “Undo” icon and saving my own time.