by Robin Ragland

Created on: May 21, 2008

I came to believe at an early age that pain was something to be learned from. Over the years this thought has evolved into a belief that no pain is without its attendant lesson. Some lessons are more obvious and others have to be dug for like bits of gold from a wall of solid rock. I believe it's worth the dig though.

I believe very strongly that our time on Earth is meant to be an education. We are here to learn, albeit sometimes reluctantly. I think we signed up for this education without realizing what the class work would be like or we might have just decided to take up beginning basket weaving instead. We are like small children, kicking and screaming about learning something new but, finally, so proud of ourselves when we learn it.

Learning comes easier to some than to others. I have seen some who learned at the first hint of dysfunction in their lives. They saw the problem and took steps to avoid it in the future. I have seen the middle-ground where it took a few stumbles on the path of life before a person got the message. And then there is the extreme end of the spectrum inhabited by those who never seem to learn from their mistakes. It is a landscape of constant calamity and a never ending state of emergency. Every step taken is through a mine field of potential disaster. Who hasn't heard the phrase: "Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it"?

I've known several people in the last category. These are the kind of people who you love dearly but find it hard to be friends with. No one likes to see someone they care about constantly derail their own train. I have spent too much time looking over the wreckage of their lives and wondering when they will stop doing the same thing, in the same way, and expecting different results. I am selfish; I get tired of watching their pain.

Every person in the world makes mistakes. What determines our level of happiness is what we do about our mistakes. Do we endlessly repeat history, or do we cash in on the pain we have felt and demand a return in the form of wisdom?

It is almost certain that, if you can look back on your life and see a pattern, see the same sort of problem coming up again and again, you are not learning from your mistakes. If chaos has become so familiar that it hardly fazes you then you need to look closer at what you are doing to cultivate it.

Are your conversations littered with phrases like, "I can't", "I won't", or "I don't"? Do you have a perfectly valid reason for not trying anything new that might help the situation? Have you been on the receiving end of more advice than you care to think about and still resist actually acting on any of it? If you answered "yes" to these questions it is almost certain that you have failed to learn from your mistakes.

It must be the bargain hunter in me, but I cannot imagine making mistakes over and over, and reaping the consequences over and over, and not learning the lessons that they are meant to teach. Pain is here to teach you. If you are in pain, look at what is going on and ask yourself this question; "what can I learn from this"? Repeat this as often as necessary. Repeat this until you get an answer.

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