Lessons Are Futile If We Don't Learn From Them

What is it about us, as human beings that make us repeat our mistakes and not learn from them? Where do we draw the line between mistakes and habits (traits that categorise who we really are)? My understanding of a mistake is something that you do as a result of flawed judgement, maybe even a moment of weakness, which carries consequences which aren’t desirable. That you want to avoid doing again at all costs. So why is it that we find ourselves time and again in those paths that don’t yield positive results for us? This is a question that has been bothering me for a while.

 

When do we get to a point where we don’t give the benefit of the doubt, when a mistake is repeated, and the same one at that, on numerous occasions? Why is it so hard for us to stray away from the things that hurt us and more so hurt those around us? I get that we learn through our mistakes, that we must fall in order to rise and that we must get it wrong to know what is right and to do better. The question though is, how many times should we fall before we get it right?

 

Life is filled with experiences that shape who we are, mistakes that make us better beings and our daily interactions are made up of lessons that we need to ultimately be all that we can be. I look at life as a series of different levels that we go through, in that way the lessons we are taught today are exactly what we need to progress to the next level of life. If we fail to grasp the lessons in the here and now, we minimise our ability to cope and do well in the next level that we are promoted to. Our mistakes are supposed to serve as building blocks, they carry in them the lessons that we need to make it to the next step. If we take my theory as correct, it means that whenever we fail to move on from the mistakes that we are currently making, if we continuously make the same mistakes, we hinder the natural growth process that should occur. It means that we stay on the same level of life and we become stagnate. Should we progress to the next level of life, not having learnt what we needed to, we most likely to find ourselves struggling in our promotion. Not knowing how to handle the responsibilities that come with that specific phase in our lives.

 

A lesson is defined as a “learning and a teaching”. Based on this, we can say that from our lessons we learn or we are taught something, whatever it may be. Once we have learnt something, isn’t it to be expected that we do better than we did previously or that we become better than were before the lesson. That takes us back to the title of this blog; lessons are futile if we don’t learn from them. If we still do the same things and we are still the same people, it means that the transformation that was to be brought about by the lesson has not occurred. Knowing something means nothing if it does not change us, how we see the world and relate to others. Lessons should bring us to a standing of knowing right and wrong, in whatever context we received it.

 

I often see people nodding their heads during a church sermon, agreeing with the message being brought forward. At the end of the service, the very people who were nodding their heads in agreement go out and do the very thing that we were warned against. It seems we hear but we don’t understand, we hear but we don’t implement in our lives. We read but we don’t change, we talk but we don’t act. We fail to make the lessons that we come across a part of our make up. In all these instances, the purpose of the lesson is lost to us. It has become meaningless.

 

We are entitled to make a mistake, that is how we discover ourselves, that is how we learn but we should refrain from repeating the mistakes that we have already been through. We should go out of our way to find the lessons hidden in our disappointments and our failures because that will enable us to do better and get to where we want to go. The lessons that we come across should do the work they are supposed to do in us, so we may be promoted to the next level of life. Our lives should not be a series of tripping and falling. As my mother always said, it’s not only through our own mistakes that we can learn; we can look at the lives of others and learn from them as well.” Simply put, I think what she was saying was that, it need not happen to you before you can learn from it. Not taking away that we are all individuals with different paths, some lessons are truly universal. The lesson may not always come through our own fall, sometimes it may be taught by witnessing the fall of someone else, and we still meant to learn from it anyway.

 

It is important to go through life, alert and open to experiences and lessons. One should never be of the idea that they know everything; there is always something you didn’t know that someone else can teach you, can make you aware of. But a man, who believes that he knows everything, cannot be taught anything, even the lessons that they come across in their journey are meaningless because they fail to realise the foundation of wisdom that lies in them. When we refuse to learn, we not only stay the same people but we are more prone to be the people that make the same mistakes throughout our lives. We receive promotion to the next level of life but we fail miserably because we have not grasped the basics of what we need to know. No one person is without flaws and acknowledging that puts you in a better position than someone who goes through life pretending that they have it all figured out.

 

When we acknowledge our flaws, we are more open to learning and when we keep an open mind, we are able to take the lessons and implement them in our lives, to spark a change, to transform us from who we are to who we want to be. The process of learning starts with being aware that we need to learn, being receptive to learning and consciously making a decision everyday, to not only hear but understand and let that understanding guide us. We should not remain prisoners to our mistakes and rob ourselves of the life we could possibly live, if we lived with awareness. Awareness of how our experiences shape us and that at the end of the day, our lives will or should be a result of the lessons we chose to implement in our lives.