Sometimes I have to hear a lesson several times before I start putting it into practice. I’ve come to think of this process as akin to gardening. Hearing the lesson once plants the seed. Hearing it several more times adds water, fertilizer, and sunlight. Water is the tears that come with failure and major challenges; fertilizer is all the hard stuff life throws at us to challenge us and make us grow; sunlight is gentle opportunities to practice the lesson as well as those nice times in life when everything feels right and flows effortlessly.
Those sunny, enjoyable times serve as important breaks from the rough times and remind us that we’ll be ok. Without those breaks, life would be unbearable for all but a handful of exceptionally determined people. When a break ends, we can reenter the more difficult times with a renewed sense of peace, determination, and hardiness. This lets us get the most out of the trying times and experience more personal growth than we otherwise could. Whatever tears we shed during those times cleanse our souls and help us make important decisions about what in our lives needs to be changed.
Although I have learned many lessons quickly, it’s more common for it to take me a while to get the hang of them. The quick way is often easy and the long way is often hard, though this isn’t always the case. Either way, if I learn a lesson the hard way, I never forget it. Whether they’re learned the easy way or the hard way, lessons are repeated until we learn them and pain is often part of the teaching. I’m more likely to notice and apply lessons that I hear from several different people, especially if they’re all saying the same thing despite not interacting with each other. I consider those to be moments of serendipity and I don’t want to miss out on what they have in store for me in the garden of my life.