Every so often, I get opportunities to dig deep and work on things within myself without too much pain. I call these opportunities “gentle lessons”. Here are a few relatively recent examples.
The first example concerns my dog, Sawyer. He went in for surgery to remove a bunch of infected teeth last November. His age and heart murmur reduced his chances of surviving the surgery. I was a wreck. I had so much fear that he wouldn’t make it and I’d lose my little buddy. I spent a lot more quality time with him in the days leading up to his surgery and cried a lot after he went in. Fortunately he made it and is doing fine to this day. Better than he was before, actually, since those teeth are no longer causing him discomfort. Even after the animal hospital called to say he was ok, however, I still was a mess. It took me a long time to come down from that heightened emotional state and feel like myself again. Later, I realized that this situation allowed me to work through a lot of emotions around Sawyer that I had neglected for years. I worked through all of them without having to lose him. Now I spend a lot more quality time with Sawyer and my relationship with him is much better as it no longer contains so much fear, sadness, and other negative emotions. I consider this to have been an extremely gentle lesson.
The other example occurred in late January of this year. I had to make a difficult phone call at my job and I got all worked up beforehand. The call ended up going much better than I thought and I felt so relieved afterward. That situation showed me where I needed to direct the focus of my inner work so that’s exactly what I started doing shortly thereafter. So far that shift in focus has done wonders for me and given me more overall peace than I’ve ever had before (more on this in a future blog post).
Gentle lessons are my favorite types of lessons. They teach me or point me toward something important for my personal growth without being excessively harsh. If I don’t take advantage of them when they come up, then I’ll inevitably encounter increasingly rougher lessons until I finally pay attention. As such, I do my best to listen for the gentle lessons and grab them before they pass me by. Do you take advantage of gentle lessons when they present themselves to you? If so, what’s an example that you vividly remember? Take care and I’ll see you in the next post.