Freedom to learn the hard way

Not all the lessons in life are learned the hard way, but many of them are.  And that’s okay.  It’s got to be.  It’s got to be okay because we will all learn the hard way from time to time.

Well, it’s hoped that we’ll learn!

One thing I’ll never forget hearing from former Australian cricket captain, Ian Chappell, was, “You learn much more from a loss than you do from a win.”  It’s something we all forget, and we hate—of course.  The pain of loss is a stinging insult to our pride and craving for comfort.  None of us is saved from this.  We’ll never get used to losing out or missing out.

The key truth I want to expound here is something I could have only learned from my wife, but actually my parents had showed me this in my formative years too.

It’s a truth we experience from how others treat us.  Just like others can traumatise us with their tyranny, others can bless us with their wisdom.  Thankfully, we can all think of people who have sown the message of hope into us.

The thing my wife does is she will advise something and just leave it.  When I don’t adopt the wisdom she offers, she doesn’t tell me “I told you so” when things go pear-shaped.  It’s like she knows and accepts that the arduous less of learning the hard way is enough.  I mean, she might mention it, but she doesn’t rub it in.

Case in point.  Three weeks ago, we were on a camping holiday weekend when a colleague sent out an SOS for someone to cover her on-call period.  I’m always keen to offer to help.  When I said yes, I didn’t really think I’d be deployed on my son’s ninth birthday, but you guessed it, my wife thought that there was a good chance of it occurring (I’m much more a risk taker than she is).

She probably even said something to that effect (you see, I can’t even recall it, which is part of the problem).

When I got the call that someone needed to go, though I was of course prepared and willing, I offered the deployment to others in my team—to give them first refusal—but when we looked at it as a team it was obvious that others couldn’t or shouldn’t be released but that I could and therefore should go.

Not a problem.  You’re not on call to not be called upon to deploy.

But as I arrived at my son’s ninth birthday, it was so HARD not being there for it and for him.  I know he REALLY misses me.  I REALLY miss him.  BUT the point is, it’s a hard lesson.

This is the wisdom: leave space for a person to learn the hard way, that is, it’s good that we don’t resent it or them for not listening to us.

There needs to be space made for all of us to learn our lessons the hard way without being chided about it.  It’s hard enough learning the hard way.  The hard way should be sufficient pain in and of itself for us to learn.  

I know, however, that many people don’t learn the hard way, they keep repeating it, or as the old Proverbs 26:11 says: “As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.”

We can’t talk people into important life lessons that they themselves can’t convince themselves of.

But it’s good to give space for a person to learn the lesson for what the lesson’s worth.

Unfortunately, in my case my son must learn the hard way at his expense, yet he’s also learning how to endure loss, which is not altogether a bad thing.  But it still warrants an apology and the compensation of time made up.

But still, there’s always space to learn the hard way.  There has to be.  We’re all destined to immersed in such lessons.