Lessons Learned

Hello, everyone.

How about those days when you could not get everything done? In my life? Can’t count them all. I haven’t had a lot of them since my retirement, but there have been a few. However, during the last couple of weeks, they fired lickety-split one after another.

Like I mentioned, I am retired. I don’t regularly go to work anymore unless I get snookered into it and that snookering has accounted for those busy days.

Snookered? The word comes from the billiard game of the same name, where a player tries to position the cue ball in ways to give their opponent no openings save one or two, and using those means not hitting the correct ball. Sounds complicated, and I’m sure it is when playing with a pro, but with your average yokel, it can produce more fun than cutthroat experiences.

I don’t know. It’s been years since I’ve gone into a pool hall. I did frequent the entertainment bars while stationed in Korea, and most had a pool table, but in truth, those places steered us toward other pursuits like drinking and women. They had a lucrative business model.

Now looking far back through the time-tunnel beyond that, to my youth, we did sneak into pool halls forbidden to us. The reason we weren’t allowed was twofold. They usually sold alcohol, and we were too young. The other reason was that the owners didn’t want us there because we tended to be wild and, on occasion, destructive.

Looking at things from the aged side of youth, I can’t blame the old fogies who chased us out. We had lots to learn about the world, and in the end, they gave us some of the lessons needed. One does not grow up to be an outstanding citizen by constantly breaking all the rules, but one needs to break a few, because learning takes place by making mistakes and getting caught.

The growing resides in the corrective posture. Punishment is needed, but it must be of the correct kind and level. Punishment does not mean cruelty. If you skip out of a restaurant without paying, you shouldn’t get shot. The old idea of working it off by doing dishes creates better men and women. And I haven’t heard that particular punishment bandied about for the longest time.

I will be honest here — I remember a day when that happened to me. I wasn’t skipping out, though. It was a case of not counting my money correctly, and as I didn’t have the correct amount, I washed. I believe the slang for it back then was pearl diving, washing things by hand. It was an honest mistake on my part, and it was an honest way to make it right. The memory of it all still sticks with me.

Each learning experience has both consequences and possibilities, and it depends on our reaction as to what those are. Looking back to the day of that particular experience, there were several lessons shoveled out, and they weren’t all for me. No, there were several one who learned something. There was the person who decided upon the punishment, too. I can’t rule out any witnesses to the event learning a little something either, because I was among a team of boys, all of whom saw what happened.

I have no idea what all the lessons delivered that day happened to be. I do believe my problem created many learning opportunities, from what is funny to feeling guilty about not helping a friend. The different kinds of things people learned that day had to be enormous, stretching from us kids to my coach and on to elderly observers.

One thought is that growing older hands out free passes when it comes to lessons and learning. Hogwash. Those holding that opinion may have a harder time with life, with what they need. We experience new rules every time our perspective changes and those change an enormous amount. It doesn’t mean the learning stops; it is simply metamorphosing to fit our new condition.

Who among all of us can say we don’t change?

As we age, we continue to learn how to develop. We branch out in directions unseen by us before.

Thinking older means a blank slate?

You probably need a nice shower to scrub the feces from your head; you’ve parked it in an uncomfortable spot, and we all have done that at one time or another. I remember in ….

Never mind.

There are a lot of lessons here if we let ourselves work them out. Learning is different for each person and for each event. Endless possibilities, and I’m not talking about within the Universe either. It is entirely plausible that there are infinite possibilities for each event, maybe for each person.

I think the possibilities abound in such a manner that that may be the reason why some people live as long as they do — we haven’t learned our fill yet.

 

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