When something negative happens to someone as a result of what we consider a decision based on poor judgement, we often say “Hopefully, he/she learned his/her lesson,” sometimes sincerely, sometimes judgmentally. We also say, “I’ve learned my lesson,” often as a last resort when all is said and done and when we can’t change what’s happened. Our solace and consolation after a challenging life event, oftentimes is that we do learn. Sooner or later, we understand what life is trying to tell us. However, have you ever wondered if in fact we need to suffer greater tragedies or go through something truly difficult before we learn?

Is Life a Fair Test or Does it Just Want to Fail Us?

I don’t know about you, but I would much prefer to learn via a positive experience, somebody else’s negative experience, intuition, common sense or life’s little hints that something is off. And we do get those, it’s like someone throwing a cotton ball at us to grab our attention, then a pebble, then a stone, then a brick, until finally, if we have not paid attention or done anything about this situation, the whole brick wall comes tumbling down on us.

What Lesson Do You Want to Learn, the Easy Way?

The number 1 thing I would like to learn how to do very well, without any tragedies attempting to teach me any so-called lessons, is to appreciate life and love even more than I do. It is through this appreciation that I can show my love to others, be truly present for them and be truly present in our life to enjoy this gift called life.

What do you want to learn, the kind way? If you stop to really think about it, what type of lessons has life taught you recently? How to value family more, friends more, money, job, health, freedom or something else? What kind of “grades” have you gotten in each of these areas? Do you need life to test you rigorously in your worst-performing areas in order for you to “prove” that you’ve learned what you need to learn? So, knowing what you want to learn, and the fact that you most likely don’t want to learn things the hard way, why is it that many of us wait until someone dies, we get divorced, we file for bankruptcy, we lose a family member, we lose our friend, we lose our child’s respect, or we lose our health, we lose the ability to enjoy the simple blessing that we have at our disposal each day, or we’re about to lose our life before we show that we truly care about that which we lost or about to lose? What on earth are we waiting for? That may depend on your circumstances and your mentality, but you want to know the ultimate lesson that life is probably wanting to teach all of us? That we shouldn’t take things for granted. Nothing is a given. We “deserve” nothing. We’re entitled to nothing. That promotion, that vacation, that salary, the car, the cruise… isn’t yours forever. Nothing, belongs to us. As trite at it may seem, we really do need to value the presents in our present while they last. Now, the point here isn’t to become paranoid… the point here is to become truly joyful and loving… NOW, when it TRULY matters. Of course, some of these life events where we experience loss are inevitable and sometimes, as hard as they may be initially, they’re even the best thing for the people involved, but if we’re feeling guilty or remorseful about whom or what we lost, it probably means that at some point, we weren’t appreciating or treasuring to the degree that we wanted to or that we know the other person needed.

Those degrees of separation between being at peace with something and not being at peace, is what hurts— it’s what damages us, and it’s what traumatizes us. We feel we were so close, and yet we were so far.

While there are times when we can say with quite a bit of conviction that we’re the victim of our circumstances, most of the time we’re not the victim– we are the conscious or subconscious perpetrator of our life circumstance.  Most situations that result in us hurting, came about because we took the important things in life for granted. This brings us to the question, if we know that it’s absolutely unnecessary to suffer greater tragedies before appreciating life and love, why do we not act like we know this? Is it because it takes more courage to love, be present, be active, be involved, than it does to experience the pain that we get if we distance ourselves from whom and what we love? That’s a question truly worth exploring. In other words, why do you subconsciously or consciously allow the tragedy to happen before you act? After all, if we care enough about ourselves and we take a moment to listen to ourselves, our feelings, and sense our intuition, you can almost immediately pinpoint what’s wrong with your life. Maybe “wrong” is to harsh of a word. You can pinpoint where you’re not interacting with life and with others to the degree that you would like and where you can appreciate life and love more. You may choose to ignore this awareness, but that’s your decision and it doesn’t mean that your feeling is not there, or that it’ll go away just because you don’t want to deal with it.

Waiting for a tragedy to strike so that you can “confirm” what you already know is an utter waste of time and of your potential.”

If you know that a job is going nowhere or a relationship is going nowhere, then, what are you waiting for?!

In life, we meet, court, go after, and eventually “marry” situations that we think we want. However, we can often feel it inside ourselves if what we’re going after is worth it, or if it isn’t. Yet for some absurd reason, we think we have to complete the cycle with everyone and everything. Let’s face it, not everyone and everything is deserving of this great commitment of ours. But yet, we choose to not do something about the dissatisfaction that we’re experiencing. That’s why there are unhappy strangers celebrating their 40 year anniversary; there are people who died today who never fulfilled their dreams because they were too busy being responsible; most of us live with junk that we bought which we’ll never use; and there are unhappy, unfulfilled and overwhelmed parents raising unhappy, unfulfilled and overwhelmed children. Worse yet, we often don’t realize that in our pursuit of following everything that doesn’t matter or that doesn’t provide us with true happiness, we plague our world with joylessness. How sad! Can you see how this emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual baggage that we’re carrying around is insane, something that affects us all and will continue to affect the generations to come unless we wake up and practice true love and true appreciation with one another and with our collective world?  Of course you can see this!

You are an A+ student in this school of life, so for the love of anything or anyone you think is worth loving, don’t wait to fail another of life’s “grueling tests” so that you can become “enlightened” after-the-fact, to do what you know you should do today.“

• Be the great friend
• Be the loving parent
• Be the caring spouse
• Be the bold entrepreneur
• Be the one who gives time lovingly and generously
• Be the one who gives a damn about the hunger and poverty in the world
• Be the one who questions the garbage we’re teaching our youth and falling for ourselves
• Be the one who takes care of your wellbeing– YOU are your best doctor
• Be the one who believes in your dreams- no matter how unrealistic they are or seem
• Be the one who makes your dreams happen so that we can all continue dreaming

You have such a full and rich life already regardless of what’s going on, that despite what the world may think and what you may have foolishly accepted, you don’t need a guest called “Tragedy” in your life. Trust me, been there, done that… you really don’t. If by chance, Tragedy does come, make sure that you are living today in such a way, that due to the enormous amount of love you give, that loving people can help, console, support and ease your pain during an inevitable tragedy. If nothing else, make sure that your mentality attracts as much positivity into your life as it can and is able to deal effectively and efficiently with Tragedy. If it must, let it come in, accept it’s offering, which is usually a lesson that you already knew, and quickly show it the door so that it can exit. Dwell on love and appreciation because ultimately, your circumstances are filled with trivial details trying to teach you what the important lessons of life are.

Share Your Wisdom Treasures

So after analyzing whether you personally do or don’t need tragedies in your life to learn about what matters in life, what proactive measures, if any, are you willing to take to demonstrate that you know the lesson?