When you slip, you lose your traction or miss your step and may fall to the ground as a result, if you were not able to regain your stamina that very moment.
But you can't just fall down without something being responsible for the fall. You may slip at Point A and fall down at Point B, while trying to regain your stamina which you were not able to. Thus, 'where you slip' and ' where you fell,' according to the proverb, are two different things. While the former can happen on its own, the later cannot, because a person cannot just fall down without something being responsible for the fall. And 'slip' is one of the factors responsible for a person falling down. Hence, 'slip' precedes 'fall.'
Mistakes are inevitable, but after making the mistake check where you went wrong in order to avoid making the same mistake a second time.
It is a foolhardy attempt and a mark of shortsightedness for a person to look at where they fell, instead where they slipped. Why looking at where they fell? Will they ever see what caused their fall at the place where they fell? For them to see and tackle what caused their fall, they must look at the place where they slipped for that is where the agent of their fall is lurking like a venomous snake looking for whom to bite again.
If you treated a disease without first finding out the cause, it may come back again. That is why medical doctors diagnose ( look at where a patient slipped) before treating their patients ( looking at where they fell). Most people fail to find out the cause of their challenges. Instead, they try to confront those challenges. But the truth is that those challenges come back again because the cause has not been eliminated! When you fail in business, find out why. Don't just start start afresh without, first, ascertaining why you failed in the first place. It could be due to poor planning, bad human relation, poor management, lack of market survey, etc. Yes, it could be due to any of those, because your business can't just fail like that. Something must have made it 'slip' and it then 'fell to the ground,' crashing to pieces. Or is it a failed marriage? The marriage must having failed due to lack of understanding, nagging on the part of either party to the marriage, gossip, keeping bad company, staying out late in the night all the time, or always inviting outsiders to come and interfere in your trivial disputes. Kill all those, and you will see your marriage survive.
If Achilles were given a second chance to live, he would have known that the reason for his untimely demise was his heels which the the only vulnerable parts of his body, and he would have guarded them carefully. We fall mostly because of our Achilles' heels ( our weaknesses), and we fail to take cognizance of that. We, instead, blame and curse the very ground where we fall. Is it not ironical that we indirectly curse ourselves, because the reason for our fall lies in us ( our faults)? Deal with your fault and you will never fall again.
That's really cool.
Thanks for reading @artakan