by Kimberly Due-Vacco

Created on: September 24, 2009   Last Updated: September 29, 2009

Life lessons from a personal perspective.

I wish I had known then what I know now. We have all heard that expression. Perhaps we have even used it a time or two ourselves. We often think it would have been nice to have all the wisdom we now possess at a younger age. Would it really have benefited us though? Would we have known what to do with it? Probably not. There is just no substitute for live experience. Yes, some people can pack a lot of life experience into a short timeframe, but the years we live have significant meaning. It is not always the hugely wonderful or hugely traumatic things in our lives that affect us the most. It is the day-to-day living that really teaches us about life, about human nature and interaction. There simply is no substitute for the years we have lived. Life lessons often take a lifetime to learn. We cannot live our lives in fast-forward.

Over time, we learn that our feelings and emotions, so easily swept aside in deference to another at 24 starts to wear us down at age 44. It is not as easy to push ourselves into the background any more. We have learned some hard lessons over the years through trial and error and one hard won lesson is simply this - I matter. Not because I am more important than the next person is, but yet because I am just as important.

For no other reason than because we exist, we are important. Our thoughts, feelings and emotions are all of significance. The trick is to come to this realization without egotism. When we first begin to come into our feelings of self worth, people around us are going to balk. They are used to us yielding to their will most of the time. This can come as quite a shock to some and we may encounter some resistance. This is gives us a chance to evaluate whether we are simply being selfish and putting ourselves first or if we are exhibiting a health amount of self-esteem.

I really hope to save my daughter from having to learn how to assert herself the hard way. It would be a beautiful thing for her to know herself inside out from a very young age. Maybe she will not ever have to have her heart broken into a thousand tiny pieces to learn what she is worth. Perhaps she will not feel the need to go along to get along in her life. I hope this for her on one hand, but on the other I know she probably won't learn very many lessons if she never feels the growing pains of life. I hate that for her. I hate the thought of her having to wrestle with some of the feelings I have had to wrestle

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