Wednesday, June 15, 2016

YOU LIVE AND YOU LEARN

Where Is The Lesson?


You live and you learn. How many of us have heard that a thousand times? How many of us have said it to ourselves when another experience has provided us additional clarity or another lesson? It's true that life is full of "educational" experiences, if we pay real good attention.

I don't believe the philosophy that "everything happens for a reason". I believe that everything that happens has happened "because of a reason". I know I dare to go against the grain of many individual belief systems when I say it, but I don't believe that there is perpetrating cause for every happening. I feel that we do ourselves a disservice when we go with that train of thought, because it assists us in avoiding underlying causes and effects in the situations and circumstances surrounding our lives, and creates a separation in our observation when we really need to apply common sense and reality to things that happen.

I think of some of the hardest places I've been, some of the hardest things I've faced, some of the excruciating situations I've dealt with, and I can honestly say that some of it was self-propelled in one way or another. I can't truly fault anyone other than myself, and certainly not the God I believe loves me. I have learned that I can look things squarely in the eye and say that these things that have happened can teach me, strengthen me, and provide me with experience that I can share with others. You live, and you will experience things. You learn, if you can grab hold of a lesson or two.

If you have questions about your life that have had you perplexed and frustrated, let me encourage you with a very loving suggestion: ask "Where is the lesson"? You will get an answer if you honestly and earnestly seek it. When you do, it will change your "Why?" into a self-awakening kind of clarity that will help you look at life much differently. 

Let's look at this: Suppose you really wanted to know why your car engine broke down. Unless you are an automotive expert of some kind, you don't know why. However, if the automotive technician dismantled every part and explained it to you, you would see and understand much better the "mechanics" of it all, and that many, many elements make it work. When we have "breakdowns" in life, similar things apply and the "reason" is apparent and sometimes obvious when we take a deeper look. "Why" the car broke down is because some part malfunctioned. "Why" life breaks down isn't necessarily because you were "targeted". Of the many "parts" and "systems" that make life work at its best, "parts" of it fail and malfunction for one "reason" or another. You learn what that is when you look for it.

~ S.R.F.