Lessons learned

Snowbound here in Missouri. . .I am reflecting on things I have learned in life.
After an emotional trauma in my life, -- sadness, anger, or embarrassment -- due to actions of myself or others, I have found that weeks, months, or maybe even years later, a great learning has taken place. At first, one is consumed with feelings of regret and blame, but very slowly the human mind assimilates new thinking. Sometimes new rules for the way to live come into being. I learned to avoid openly discussing what I regarded as my shortcomings in a work situation; unscrupulous co-workers will happily use those words to excuse their own failings. Friends who have been divorced for decades have disclosed that now they understand why the break-up occurred, while at the time, they only felt grief and wrath.

An older friend, raised comfortably in a city home, married into a farm family in the thirties. She had to learn to do laundry without indoor plumbing, how to raise chickens for eggs and meat, garden and preserve huge quantities of food for winter use. I asked her how she adjusted to such radical change. "It was a lesson to be learned," she said.

Sounds trite, but it is true. Preserve us from bitterness when life does not go our way.