Learning Lessons, the Hard way!

Pain, I feel, is the greatest teacher in life. There is nothing to beat that fact.

As a kid, the fear of physical punishment got me learning my lessons. As an adult, I realize that that it does take a painful incident in life to actually learn a lesson!

Lessons in life, to me, come in all sorts of forms, shapes, sizes and colors. Every day brings in its own set of lessons. Some are quite easy, while others are really challenging and tough. The tough ones are more or less like the dreaded surprise tests which came as a bolt from the blue during student days, especially when you are the least bit prepared. You never know what hit you until you find yourself painfully flat on the hard, cold, rocky ground, with every inch of your heart and soul badly bruised and broken.  If you made the mistake of thinking that this is the most painful part, you are wrong. This is only the prelude to the actual process of learning of the particular chapter life has doled out to you.

The remarkable part of life's umpteen lessons is that they come with a choice… an option of grateful acceptance or being miserable about them. The former option is obviously more sensible, but fallible, puny mortals that we are, we seldom realize it and go with the second one. Anyway, the intensity of the pain gradually diminishes with passage of time which could be anything from a few hours to long years. In the course of this learning process, your mind is made to evaluate your actions which led you to this messy situation in the first place. Believe me, this is the toughest part in learning and you are made to go through a period of internal conflict filled with fault finding, self pity, hatred, anger, low self esteem and a variety of add on emotions that are nowhere near being positive.  The duration of this phase again depends on your ability to become aware of your mistakes and rectify it. Fortunately, most of us emerge stronger and better from this process. This signifies the end of the particular chapter and you may be given a fresh lease of life by your spiritual masters…

But the interesting part (I can’t help being amused) is that there are some unlucky souls who keep on repeating the same mistakes and end up in a very sorry state time and again. They never learn a lesson from the first experience and keep on stumbling and falling time and again, going through the same painful learning process over and out.  Like those ‘repeaters’ in entrance coaching classes (pardon the comparison), they are made to repeat the process of going through the same session till the  subject matter gets ingrained within their thick skulls. And mind you, until and unless they get the lesson right, there is no escape. In case you fear monotony in this learning procedure, let me remind you that the intensity of the pain is never the same. It varies according to your age, attitude, experience, circumstance, and most importantly, the toughness of the lesson itself.

Considering the fact that each of life’s valuable lessons is learnt in this hard, painful manner, I really wonder why they say that ‘learning is a pleasant experience’…