― Ralph Waldo Emerson
I do know that life is a series of experiences with lessons attached so I have learned to ask myself, “What am I supposed to be learning from this situation?” I have also been told that if I don’t learn the lesson on the first presentation, I will have ample opportunities to learn it again until I accept and master the lesson. Life is the teacher.
Right now I feel like the biggest and most valuable lessons are falling into my lap. It may be that I have gotten better at recognizing that it is a lesson or that I am more willing to embrace the opportunity to learn. However, each day has something to present to me and my life and its patterns are making more sense to me and I am having these Eureka! moments.
Ok, ok, ok. I know that this has something to do with age and perspective and cumulative experience. I am just relishing that joy in the discovery of wisdom that will make life more understandable to me.
At the same time as I am evolving and growing and making sense of my world. I recognize that I am also a product of my family. I would observe (as others have commented upon) that I am turning into my mother. I recently spent almost a full day sitting in a live auction enjoying the chance to learn about antiques and occasionally raise my paddle to place a bid. I was rewarded with a comment from the auctioneer that I had bid and won the best steal of the day. It would have pleased my mother greatly.
Since the year of living with my mother as her care taker and of her passing, I have touched every antique she collected, preserved, and lovingly documented. I now own a home purchased to house everything I inherited and have made a homestead in tribute to all the lessons my mother taught me about cooking, entertaining, gardening, decorating, home repair, and preserving history for its beauty. It is only in her absence that I really have stepped up and into her shoes. I was listening and observing, after all.
I am liking this time in my life when I have more behind me than in front of me and the hills that I climb in my life, at least metaphorically, aren’t as steep or as risky. I have a metaphorical-backpack filled with good lessons — and more keep raining down upon me.
• What from your parents and family is showing up in your life?
• What is the biggest and best lesson that you have encountered recently?
• Why do you like being the age you are right now?
Leslie
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
― Carl Gustav Jung