Lessons in Life

I've been thinking about this topic for quite a while now, but forgive me if it's a little hazy.

I guess the phrase "lessons in life" can be defined rather easily: Lessons that people learn throughout their lives. But it opens the door into a very broad and, as far as i know, unexplored area of meaning. Every time someone learns a lesson about something it increases their knowledge, and most often people change their views and actions in accordance with what they have learnt. These lessons help that person develop, grow and enhance their personality or the way in which they view the world.

The lessons can be about anything and everything, and everyone learns them some time or another. The lessons that are noticed are usually the big ones, for example the consequences of certain bad (or good) actions, or the emotional fallout that can occur from something happening in an important part of our lives. The lessons I want to talk about though, are the small ones.

We learn hundreds of lessons about life and the way things work and what different people are like every day. Most of them we don't even notice! Once I started thinking about it, I noticed how much I learnt just by biking home from school, or from having a conversation with one of my friends. Many of the lessons we have learnt before, and are just relearning, for example relearning that it's generally a good idea to duck when biking under trees with low over-hanging branches (one I'm afraid to say I've had to learn many a time). Other lessons that we might learn is how certain people react to certain jokes or conversation topics. If they react in a bad way then we know not to talk about it around them again, or if it particularly amuses them then we know that it's something good to say when they're feeling down. I've found that I watch people a lot, and I like to watch what they do and then try and figure out why they do and for what purpose. And from that I nearly always learn something about types of personalities or something about that particular person. I learn at least twenty things about different people and different personalities every day.

The important thing I learnt about these 'small lessons', is that they are very important for our personal developement. Every single one of these hundreds of lessons that we learn has the potential to change the way we are now or the way we will turn out in ten years time.

There is only one drawback (if it can be called that) with these lessons. Even if we don't realise it each time we learn a lesson, it still does something to us to change the way we are. But if we take notice each time we learn a lesson, and with God's help try to implement it into our lives, we can gain ten times the amount of benefit from it! Even having to duck every time we bike under a tree with low over-hanging branches - it will benefit you in the future (trust me on that one!)

I'll leave you one last thought. Imagine if, for every single lesson that you learnt every day and with God's help put it to good use in your life, you earnt one dollar in your heavenly bank account. Just think how rich you would be once you got there!