Date:                           September 27, 2010

 

Location:                    Plattekill, NY

 

1000

 

            As a person walks through the streets of his life a few facts become more and more evident as he takes each step.  To some people this is called experience, to others it is called sage wisdom, to me it is simply the realization that life is an education and each breath holds a lesson of some sort in which we should all find knowledge.  Some lessons are easy and simple and some lessons take us a life time to understand.  The knowledge is not that difficult to understand it is the receptors on the student that often slow the process.  I speak from personal experience in the all too slow learning process.  At the old age of well over 60 I am still learning many things I am sure I was taught over again as I trod through the steps of my life.      

 

            One of my most difficult lessons to learn and fully understand is that advice is valued by the receiver and not by the provider.  I know that I have, over the years, offered all too much advice that I thought invaluable only to find that the person to whom I had offered my experience and knowledge found little to no value in it what so ever.  This is a very difficult lesson to learn and an even more difficult one to put to practice. I realize that we all will continue to offer our sage wisdom to the people we love and about whom we care.  I also realize that we will only offer that wisdom in a manner we hope will make the situation better or less stressful for the recipient.  I am still trying to learn it is ok for the recipient to totally disregard everything we say and proceed on their chosen path through their own life.  Their refusal to accept our advice does not make it wrong; it only makes it wrong for them at this point in their lives.  It is a simple phrase.  It is a simple principle.  It is a very difficult reality to accept.  It is very difficult to know you are right and not understand how it could be wrong for someone else at this time in their lives.  Or at least they think it is wrong and it is their life and their right to chose where and how they live each second.

 

            It is much simpler to learn lesson like; don’t step in the steaming divots at a polo match, or don’t eat the yellow snow; or the biggest truck in the sandbox has the right of way.  These are all easy rules to understand and most of us have learned them early in life. We have applied them to life and progressed in our personal evolution.  It always seems that it is the personal relationship principles that produce the most difficult learning opportunities.  It is always the areas in our lives at which we want to be the most adept that we find the most difficult lesson we need to learn and apply in our own progress through existence.  Why isn’t the path through personal relationships as easy as learning that one looks where he steps when he walks through a cow pasture.  In either situation if one takes a wrong step it is going to cause a big stink.

 

            Life is a very strange equation.  It takes about 2 years to be taught that you are the center of the universe.  It then takes the rest of you life to realize that the rest of the world thinks that they too are the center of the universe.  At two years old when you begin realizing that everything we say and everything we do is not perfect it is called “The Terrible Twos.”  When you still fell like you are the wealth of knowledge and wisdom at 63 you are simply called an over powering, interfering, and pontificating old poop.  Maybe we just never out grow our experience of living in the realm of “The Terrible Twos.”  Advice is thought to be golden when given and all too often afforded the weight of lead and value of nil when received.  I guess that is a lesson we all must accept.  We don’t have to like it, we just have to learn it and accept it as a reality.

 

            Maybe I will think about that tomorrow.