Experience Makes You Who You Are

My kids went to karate when they were younger. One night, one of the instructors was talking to the parents, and explaining why they taught the kids, the way they taught. He explained that if you talk to the child, and tell them the right way to break a board with their foot, just telling them wouldn’t have the same effect as the child actually trying to break the board with their foot the wrong way.  Why? Because the wrong way hurts!!

Once you do it, and you feel how it hurts, you learn by experience. You learn the reasons why, and how come. 

I think it’s the same way with life.  So often we don’t want to go through something. We try to forget something that has happened to us in the past, or we even try to simply live life on auto-pilot, without realizing that it’s that very DAILY experience of living that life, that makes us who we are. 

We may not have fond memories of a past event, but it still shapes how we see the world, why we react the way we do, and where we are headed.

I think only trying to embrace the good things in our life can potentially be limiting.  The bad and painful stuff in our lives are what sometimes teach us the most!  We would not be who we are without it.  Our choices based on those events and experiences, mold and shape us – whether we like it or not. 

That’s why it’s never fair to say how we’d act or react in a certain situation. Because until you are in that spot, feeling those feelings, and going through those things – you just – don’t – know.

I want to learn, grow, and better myself because of challenges that I go through. And I want to be able to look back and see why I had to go through those things and how come God allowed me to be sifted in a certain way. I want to see that I learned from each experience and was stronger because of them.

We can go through life trying to pave our own way without acknowledging why we are meant to do something – OR - we can listen to what the whispering of experience in our life is trying to tell us and change our direction accordingly.

We can let it fuel us and make us wiser and stronger.

That’s the way I hope I choose. How about you?