Image by ChrisL_AK
I was looking at a website that asked me to tell a story about myself. (It was for a book called Success Built to Last – which I’ve ordered from Amazon, it looks great).
It asked me to write about a bad time in my life. It was easy to think of a bad time – getting divorced. I did this about five or six years ago. I can remember, in the final year or so of my marriage, while travelling to work on the train, almost crying with loneliness. It was not a pleasant time.
Then came the embarrassing part. I was asked what I had learned from this experience. I’m someone who thinks a lot about things and spends lots of time reflecting on my experience in light of different psychotherapies. So the answer to the question of what I had learned wasembarrassing, because the answer was: not much.
After getting together with my new partner I was surprised how long it took me to unlearn habits from my marriage – feeling that I would be verbally attacked if we had a problem to sort out was the major one. It took over a year for me to learn this.
So I’ve got to thinking about this. At the time I was too caught up just getting through the days to worry about learning. And feeling miserable doesn’t help either.
On the other hand I can remember several instances where just stray remarks from friends have really hit home. They haven’t meant to be talking to me about anything major but these remarks I can still remember. And sometimes they have lead to changing my behaviour. One was: “Your such a tease Evan”. I simply hadn’t realised this, I’d thought we were enjoying ourselves together (everyone seemed to be joining in the banter). This led to my changing the way I did conversations.
At these times I wasn’t trying to learn anything. I was just pretty relaxed and enjoying myself.
So my question is: of the life lessons you’ve learned has it been from big things or small things? And following on from this: have the easier times lead to more or less learning than the difficult times in your life? I’d love to hear what your experience has been.
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I think you’re really on to something here.
I once heard a wise old man say: “We fight change with every means at our disposal.” When problems are great we build up a great fortress of defences and make damn sure we keep all threats out – big or small. Such a person is pretty immune to change at that point. When the defences are lower we still keep full frontal attacks out, but allow smaller, less threatening things in and they then help to change our inner culture. (I don’t know if m metaphor works well, but you get my drift.)
You’ve made an important point for teachers, therapists, etc. to consider.
I think it’s a great metaphor. Thanks.
When we are going through something I think we all consider it as something “big”. After sometime though it seems a minor thing and one wonders why we made such a big deal out of it.
Its been a bit of both for me.I have learned something from most of my life experiences.
Hi Shamelle,
A good point. Time can certainly help to give us perspective.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.