Have you heard that ‘experience’ is
the best teacher? Well it’s just not true. What is true is that hands-on
experience can be a practical or even more effective training tool making
abstract learning tangible, but experience alone, especially what we are forced
to learn through the school of hard knocks is probably one of the worst teachers
of all. Sure we learn things, even important life lessons like, “I’ll never do
that again!” or “Damn, that Hurt!” or worse yet, “This is impossible!”
What if my Dad taught me some of
the important lessons that instead I ended up only learning through this school
of hard knocks? I believe that I could
be a lot further along and even more effective, more prosperous, or more
successful than I am right now. There is a principle of getting a head start
advantage that does seem to work in a lot of different arenas. I hope that the
way I parent is helping my children reach further than I ever have. I know I am
seeing a lot of good things in my children’s lives already. One daughter has
already “traveled the world on her toes” with ballet, and I remember the day I
worked with her to teach her to skip. Now she is finishing as Masters in
Counseling Psychology and is currently developing a curriculum to integrate
movement into counseling therapy. Another daughter is committed to changing the
world by using her competencies with Sign Language to promote greater
resilience among developing communities. I remember telling funny bedtime
stories and praying with her for favor and success to increase in her life. Our
third daughter is a strong advocate working to empower victims of abuse, and
there were many times I would pick her up and carry her on my shoulders as she
would remind me that “She was only little.” Such wonderful memories of holding
each of my children in my arms and cuddling. Our son has served in the
Caribbean as well as Papua New Guinea to improve access to clean drinking water
as an integral part of spiritual outreach while only yesterday, I was the
monster in the middle of the trampoline in our frequent wrestling tumble. I am
confident our youngest son will be doing similar things as he steps into his
professional development himself. We
still joke and laugh together as we play our games. I hope that the wisdom I
share and the opportunities I provide though my parenting style equips each of
my kids with the practical ability to live abundant lives on purpose. Also I
pray this for the ones who we have been working with in our ministry because we
are committed to making disciples who are world-changers.
Sadly, so many people seem to bump
their way through life more like a pin-ball bouncing from one thing to another,
sometimes racking up points, other times getting a bonus, until the inevitable
eventually happens and their ball ends up in the gutter and the sign lights up
“GAME OVER.” Bouncing through life as a pin-ball is more or less how
experience teaches us. We soon learn
where the most points are wracked up and once in while we nudge things along as
best as we can as long as we don't get disqualified for a “tilt” of the
machine. Like the rest, I’ve learned to cope and to adapt to a variety of
situations. I’ve learned to roll though life and respond as effectively as I
can with life’s ups and downs. Even if life gives me lemons, I’ve learned that
I can make pretty good lemonade. I guess you could say that in a lot of ways,
I’m an overcomer.
In my own life, I am now learning that
there are a lot of ideas that formed my beliefs were not taught to me directly
as much as they were formed through the way I interpreted my experiences.
Lessons I gained through my experiences got built into the internal framework
of my life. Many of the principles I learned early in my childhood have been
silently influencing my life in some way, ever since I was a little boy. Only
now am I realizing that some of these beliefs or convictions are not actually
truths at all. They were only true in the way I interpreted my experience but
not necessarily absolute truths.
Underlying beliefs or perspectives
are called paradigms. Others explain these as the lens through which we
see and view the world we live in. Everything that happens in our life tends to
get referenced back to the original data and conclusions that we formed. Most
of the time, we analyize each of our everyday experiences in a way that either
validates or reinforces our foundational beliefs. Those are the ones that we
keep to help strengthen our position or inform our decisions and actions. We need these to validate our behavior
because without overarching guiding principles, we have no foundational basis
to move through life. This is our internal gravity that gives us the ability to
make progress to journey through life. Without such guiding principles we would
essentially be lost in space, floating through life with no sense of being,
purpose or destiny.
