Plato keeps returning to a plain claim. People go wrong from not seeing clearly, not from choosing to be bad. In the Meno he walks a boy through geometry, and the boy's wrong answers come from guessing in the dark. Nobody thinks the boy is a wrong answer.

A deed is a moment. A child is the whole of them. The two live in different piles, and growing up is largely learning which pile things belong in.

Shame glues the piles together. The crash and the yell fuse into a verdict, and the child reads the volume as proof. I broke it hardens into I am bad.

Naming what happened loosens the glue. The cup broke. Now we pick up the pieces together. Picking up is its own work, and worth stays out of it.

You do this burning dinner or sending a typo in a big email. For an hour you feel like a fraud. Then the hour passes and you are still you.