What Are We Learning From Others?

THE GOAL OF LIFE for the saved person is learning for the next life—a state of perfection we will achieve, and now is the time to trial for such a milieu.

One of the best ways of learning is via observation, because it’s not our mistakes we are learning from, but from others’ successes and mistakes and everything else.

Indeed, everything is free for us as we open our eyes.

We get a fuller view of life as we stand at a slight distance, taking in all we can possibly discern. It’s both a vital learning vehicle and an interest—because our focus takes us in millions of stimulating directions; all without leaving our minds.

Turning From Boredom to the Stimulation of Insight

One of the commonest problems we all face is situations where life is neither difficult nor fascinating. The common experience is ho-hum.

But if we switch our focus from our wanton desire to be stimulated over to the practice of stimulating ourselves, through what we see, we experience the enlightenment of the Lord, for all this is revealed for us, simply, uniquely, for our sight alone. For, we’re the only ones that see the way we do. And the Lord has destined these insights for our learning.

We may typically find other people strange, warm, onerous, irritating, peaceable, attractive, chatty, stubborn, pleasant, in-our-face, withdrawn etc—a thousand different facets of perception abound.

The Lord has placed each one in our midst to be learned from.

Becoming a Discoverer of Life

Boredom and complaint are common temptations of the distractive variety—they take us, and our mental and emotional resources, away from God’s abiding Presence.

They make us fixate on those things that we were always destined to pass over.

At all stimuli of boredom and complaint there is present a godlier stimulus. But we can only see it as we approach even the most banal situations in life with renewed interest—that of the early discoverer.

Discoverers are curious. Their curiosity takes them into the relatively unknown vestiges of the mind, and from there the heart is activated whenever plenteous new things are found. Wonder flourishes.

The great thing about other people is, because they are so different to us, they will shed the discoverer’s light on life—not by what they do or say, but by what we see in what they do and say.

There is a mix here in our pure observation and our perception of the observation.

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There is a discoverer in each of us and the world stands for us as our profiteer. This is the real-life, not the one of acquisition, petty complaint, or boredom. As we commit to being a discoverer, wonder is ours for the taking.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.