Growth?
I was thinking about this on my way home (it's easiest to think when there's nothing else to do, I believe). I've had the fortune of often being noticed and thus having to answer for my actions. Seldom in my life have I escaped when I've behaved in a manner disagreeable to social morales. Not that those were necessarily even popular social morales; could've been something as simple as select group morales. Regardless, I've always been noticed, in that way. I've, to my eyes anyway, rarely been noticed in a positive light, hence my perpetual cynicism and pessimism. For a simple example, if I got out of line in school, I was noticed. Five other people could have gotten out of line without note, but as soon as I did, I was noticed. Talking in class? No matter how quiet I was I got noticed. Saying stupid things about other people? Yeah, I was noticed. Everytime something like that happened I had to answer for it to somebody. Always there was somebody there to call me out on it. This made things very unpleasant for me, from my childish perspective, but looking at it now, I can see some definite positives to this experience. Being forced to account for and answer for all of my indiscretions certainly made me think more about what I was going to do. I learned to not act without thinking. Of course I still do, but I suspect I give more thought to things than most people, just judging by the length of time before which I do something or my subsequent questioning of the reasoning leading to a particular course of action.
As with all things there's a positive and negative. That of which I'm aware is that I don't always perform the expected series of actions in response to a particular command. So commands that some people would follow with instinctive ease leave me quite bewildered and, thus, apparently insubordinate. It's not that I don't want to obey, in fact it's often quite the contrary. My desire to so perfectly perform the requested action causes me to fail to perform the desired action itself. I suspect that as I sit here and try to teach Frodo the "lay down" command, that very problem is playing itself out. Frodo eagerly obeys my command to "come here" and "sit" and looks at me expectantly when I tell him to "lay down." I think he genuinely wishes to obey correctly, he's just not able to figure what I wish him to do. Poor pup, I'm trying to teach me what it is I want, and he can't make the logical leap. I've had the good fortune of receiving instruction on this particular behavioral/mental stitch though and am trying to effectively lead him around to the understanding of the behavior. One must never expect another person to make a logical leap without the person being able to at least see where they stand relative to their destination. Sometimes people are quite willing, but they need one to show them the trail. Then they'll follow it to its end quite well.
Additionally this reflection has been making me think about the process of learning and growth. Much of my learning process and growth has been through unpleasant experiences. I think it would be short-sighted for me to state that all learning and growth comes through unpleasant experiences, but often it is said that the most effective, most enduring lessons are those that are the "hard lessons" we learn for ourselves. It's conventional wisdom, and often such well accepted maxims have some element of truth (though not always). However it may apply to others, I believe many of my best lessons have come from the myriad of unpleasant and difficult experiences I've had. Just as I learned to more carefully think about the consequences of my actions before doing them by suffering the unpleasant consequences so often and having to explain my motivations so very frequently.
Charles
As with all things there's a positive and negative. That of which I'm aware is that I don't always perform the expected series of actions in response to a particular command. So commands that some people would follow with instinctive ease leave me quite bewildered and, thus, apparently insubordinate. It's not that I don't want to obey, in fact it's often quite the contrary. My desire to so perfectly perform the requested action causes me to fail to perform the desired action itself. I suspect that as I sit here and try to teach Frodo the "lay down" command, that very problem is playing itself out. Frodo eagerly obeys my command to "come here" and "sit" and looks at me expectantly when I tell him to "lay down." I think he genuinely wishes to obey correctly, he's just not able to figure what I wish him to do. Poor pup, I'm trying to teach me what it is I want, and he can't make the logical leap. I've had the good fortune of receiving instruction on this particular behavioral/mental stitch though and am trying to effectively lead him around to the understanding of the behavior. One must never expect another person to make a logical leap without the person being able to at least see where they stand relative to their destination. Sometimes people are quite willing, but they need one to show them the trail. Then they'll follow it to its end quite well.
Additionally this reflection has been making me think about the process of learning and growth. Much of my learning process and growth has been through unpleasant experiences. I think it would be short-sighted for me to state that all learning and growth comes through unpleasant experiences, but often it is said that the most effective, most enduring lessons are those that are the "hard lessons" we learn for ourselves. It's conventional wisdom, and often such well accepted maxims have some element of truth (though not always). However it may apply to others, I believe many of my best lessons have come from the myriad of unpleasant and difficult experiences I've had. Just as I learned to more carefully think about the consequences of my actions before doing them by suffering the unpleasant consequences so often and having to explain my motivations so very frequently.
Charles