Human life is rife with mistakes, bad judgment, and failure. Bostonians are no different from anyone else in those matters.

But making mistakes or suffering from poor judgment or failure doesn’t necessarily mean that one can’t accomplish goals. Nevertheless, recent events and situations in the city make us have a few reservations.

Peter Meade’s appointment as director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority is something that we should watch carefully. On the one hand he’s more familiar than most recent BRA directors with the way the city works. He’s had jobs in different industries and in government. He has Mayor Menino’s ear.

He has the enormous task of filling up the Filene’s hole with something that those of us who live downtown, not to mention those living in the whole region, will use and appreciate.

So why would his appointment call for reservations? First, he has sometimes seemed out of control at public meetings. And second, the appointment is too cozy, as if the mayor was tired of dealing with hiring, and this was an easy way out.

If Meade can fill up the Filene’s hole, his tenure will be a success. And maybe coziness is just what we need at this time. Pundits are always predicting doom or success based on little information. But let’s reserve judgment, while being watchful. Let’s wish Meade well and hope that his talents, rather than his shortcomings—which we all have, can make the city better.

The skate park under the Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge on the north side of the river is also a situation about which many people have reservations. Fundraising for the project started in 2003. By 2008, the Charles River Conservancy, which sponsored the skate park, had raised $2.5 million, but faced an impasse with the Department of Conservation and Recreation over who would oversee the park, maintain it and accept responsibility for safety. DCR, of course, was struggling with the economic meltdown and subsequent reduction in funding.

The Charles River Conservancy has some high profile, heavy-hitting, aggressive people on its board. Renata von Tscharner, the conservancy’s director, is no shrinking violet herself. But the conservancy’s leadership was divided, with some people wanting to give DCR time to sort things out and others wanting to press harder. Meetings became fractious. Why wasn’t this park being built? Other cities have skate parks, but Boston skateboarders have no legal place to do their stuff. Why do we have to sit around while DCR procrastinates?

Meanwhile skateboarders are chewing up the hardscape at Copley Square and on the Esplanade between Leverett Circle and the railroad bridge near Spaulding Rehab.

Maybe, possibly, sometime in the foreseeable future, skateboarders will get this appropriate place to practice their moves. Things are still moving slowly, and frustrations are still pervasive, but progress has been made.  The idea now is that DCR will use Big Dig mitigation funds to build the park and the money the conservancy raised will be used to hire a third-party operator who will run the park. Through a long and difficult process the conservancy has prepared a plan for DCR that enables the state agency to send out a Request for Proposals. DCR has not yet done that, which has further frustrated the board members who want the process to go faster.

So, while it may look to onlookers as if the project has been a bust, there seems to be a better than average chance that the skate park will be built. Von Tscharner sees the tortuous pathway in a good light. “While we would have liked for the project to moved faster, the outcome in fact is a better one in many ways,” she wrote in an email. One reason for her optimistic assessment is that a private company, EF, has now agreed to landscape an adjacent site that will allow for a skate shop and refreshments, she said.

There is a saying: “Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it.”

We need reservations about matters. We also need to have confidence that often things work out well, even when mistakes seem to have been made.