A Lesson For Us All

No matter how we feel about the world and all that is happening around us,  a different perspective can sometimes offer us a way to deal with the stress we are feeling.

 We could ask ourselves why it is we are experiencing the world in its current state of affairs? Why us, now and not the many generations that have passed before us – our ancestors and more recently departed relatives who lived and died without knowing about what lay ahead for their descendants. Many lived through world wars, civil wars, famine, disasters both natural and generated by man. Those people they can lay claim to surviving through the most perilous and terrifying times, only to come out stronger and often humbled by the rawness of the event and the devastation left in its wake. When you are in the company of a veteran or anyone who has experienced such an event you know you are in the presence of someone who truly values his life because he has seen the hand of death, and knows that being alive is the greatest gift we ever receive.

Perhaps we are somehow given our life with its own unique set of challenges at a certain time in history because it is what we somehow need. That may seem tough to fathom especially when we see innocent people with huge challenges in their path. But if we can try to learn from each experience however small or large, then we begin to see our problems as lessons to be learned, and they are no longer problems. As we go through life taking one day, one problem (lesson) at a time, then we have time to reflect and learn.

When a ´lesson´ presents itself, ask yourself what it is you can learn from it, to be taken forward? Sometimes the answer is quite clear, but often we need to really step back and take an objective view to be able to see what it is we need to learn in order to move on.

When we take a retrospective look at our challenges faced previously, we can often find patterns in the way we dealt with them. The pattern is often repetitive. A good example would be, in being attracted to partners because of a weakness in ourselves, rather than because there is a genuine connection.  Its only when we change our response to our challenges that they stop re-occurring. It is then that we have learned our lesson, so we no longer need that same challenge to keep showing up.

Of course the world events seem as though they are happening around us, and that we cannot effect them in anyway. We may indeed worry about them and feel consumed by them, but how can they be lessons in our personal journey, when we feel we cannot change them in anyway?

Perhaps it is we, the human race, who is being shown a lesson? A collective lesson. Did those who lived through war, emerge as a better society? Many individuals became better people, but collectively, what did we learn? Maybe the lesson is still to be learnt. Perhaps that’s why history repeats itself, in much the same way we do when we keep making bad choices, because we haven’t heard the message. What is it we need to see right now about ourselves during this time? Perhaps there is a lesson here for all of us, and maybe it’s the same one, but we must each confront it and deal with it ourselves.