Day 274 Question 274:

What life lesson did you learn the hard way?

Ugh life lessons….how many do we have to learn throughout this life?  Ha Ha!  There are times when all of us grow sick of the lessons but come the end of the day we do understand them.  As children and teens our parents drive us absolutely crazy and we do whatever we can to avoid them and defy them and we hated listening to the broken record phrase, “you will understand when you are older”.  It was so easy to just roll your eyes and move on.  We had it all figured out.  Now looming in my mid 30’s I have realized I knew absolutely nothing and I am able to completely understand what my parents were saying.  There were so many things that I was told and I would let the words just deflect off of me…I didn’t hear them.  Even the simple most common phrase, “Stop and smell the roses” was just cliché and meant nothing to me.  I understand it now.  Life passes us by so fast and it is so important to take time to appreciate what we have and all that surrounds us.  My 34^th birthday is in a little over a month and I feel like it was just last week that I celebrated my 33^rd birthday with a big group of friends.  My 18^th birthday was almost 16 years ago and I remember getting stoned in my dorm room getting ready to leave for Thanksgiving break (see how times changed….the times of me partying and smoking pot seems like eons ago and a whole different person ago but I remember it as clear as day).

Over all of this time I have learned so many lessons and some have brought a lot of pain and some have brought more happiness than one could even imagine.  Out of all of the lessons the one that took me forever to really learn and hold onto is to love and accept myself for all that I am.  I believe that in life this is the most important lesson for everyone and unfortunately some people are never able to rise to this challenge (I mean it did take me pretty much 33 years).  Once I started to love and accept myself for my pluses and my negatives, my attributes and my flaws, I saw life so differently.  The superficial stopped mattering and my relationships became more real.  I have gained friends and lost friends and I have evaluated the reasons as to why but I do not blame or dislike myself because of the losses.  Being human means making mistakes and no matter what there will be people that will never be able to accept those mistakes and people that won’t like you but in this life we are all the navigators of our own ships.  We can’t allow others to steer our course….this was a very difficult lesson to learn but the most important lesson that I needed to learn.

I wasn’t sure how this blog would pan out when I started it or what direction it would take but I have found that it has been my opportunity to be completely honest with myself.  I have found that I have reminded myself of the wisdom and the beauty that I hold within me and that these are the most important aspects of my person.  This life lesson came from experience in this huge world and a society the ability to chew us all up and spit us out.  After loathing myself and living in a constant state of anxiety I took control and decided that I was not going to be a victim.  I was not going to let my ego control me or the egos of all of the superficial “minds” of the world.  It became easy when I opened myself up to knowledge and I realized that life is made up of choices….our choices not everyone else’s choices.  I am small and the world is huge and there is opportunity in every moment.  I will not be able to take advantage of every opportunity but I am sure going to try my hardest to grip onto as many as I possibly can.  As you can see there isn’t one specific life lesson that changed me…there were lots.  I share this stuff with my readers because I know others have struggled and have questions and are looking for answers and I want people to know that I am and have been in that very same boat.