FWF: On learning Lessons

I participate in Free Write Friday which is put together by the lovely Kellie Elmore  on her blog Magic in the backyard. Check out this week's prompt: Here is your Free Write Friday Prompt: Finish this line… “One of the hardest/most important/best (<- your choice) lessons I have ever learned was…” Elaborate Enjoy!

On Learning Lessons

One of the easiest lessons I have ever learned was that learning lessons normally comes in one of the following forms: hard, difficult, challenging, unexpected, too late, and last but oh so not the least, in hindsight. We all have those times where someone hands down a nugget or two of their own experience, hoping that we will take them at their word. More times than not, we opt to find it out on our own.

Other times, we are smack dab in the middle of the ocean (situation) in a boat with a slow leak wondering why no one warned us about what we were getting into!

I guess you could say I'm a bit on the hard headed side at times...meaning I am the person that hears the tales of how badly the choice I'm about to make went for person A. But hey, I'm not person A, I'm person B dang it and maybe things will be different for me!

It's often not too long from thinking said thoughts that person A is screaming 'I told you so's' in their head while giving a sympathetic nod to a confused/outraged/saddened/duped person b. We let ourselves think that we will have the magic missing piece that other people couldn't find in the puzzle before us. Sometimes we do, and that's awesome. But other times we wind up right there with them, only up side being we aren't alone in our downfall. We take opportunities to learn from other peoples success or failure and let them be a part of the damage assessment instead of the solution.

Everything adds up in hindsight. 1+1 is always 2 when you're looking back at the finished equation. But when you've got a wicked word problem presented to you, filled with unnecessary information and limited solutions to choose from it can be difficult to simply choose the obvious answer. Sometimes we miss things because we are so busy trying to find a deeper meaning. Yes, lots of lessons aren't cut and dry, but sometimes all we have to do is just stop, breathe and think about it. Really think before doing anything because mostly mistakes come from being careless in thought.

I guess my nugget of  wisdom I'd like to pass on about learning lessons is this: Never assume you can't learn from EVERYTHING! Keep your eyes open because everywhere you turn people are sharing the lessons they've learned with you. Like the pregnant cashier at the grocery store who looks absolutely miserable because she is rapidly nearing her due date but can't afford to take time off until her water breaks because she wasn't prepared to be a mom yet. She's subconsciously teaching you the importance of getting out of line, right now, to get some protection.   

That's just one example though, we experience so many more than that every day. Question is, are you paying attention?

That concludes my contribution to the Free Write Friday writing prompt by the magic in the backyard blog. I had no idea where I was going with this when I first began, I must say we wound up in an interesting place... If you enjoyed it, awesome! If you thought it was weird/bad/horrible/offensive-to-thine-eyes...well, you just learned a valuable lesson of what not to do...see what I did there?

Click here to listen to the poem I wrote about a week ago about learning lessons! (I don't know why it's not on this blog...slacking I guess)

Follow me!  @talichaj

Be sure to check out Kellie's blog by clicking the picture below!