Do you ever have moments where an event from your past spontaneously pops into the forefront of your mind? Tonight at dinner, the conversation around the table was about taking the bus to school, and I was reminded of one particular morning, when I was seconds away from missing the bus, which was a regular occurrence for me. I grabbed my things and rushed out of the house, heading for the gap in the hedgerow that provided the most direct route to the road. In my rush, I hopped over the rope that hung as a “fence” around our swimming pool with quite a bit more vigor than I normally did, and hooked my foot, causing me to fall into the wet grass.
At the time, for middle school me, that was a horrifying experience. Obviously everyone already on the bus witnessed this, I had grass stains on my knees, and it probably hurt. Tonight, though, I cannot stop laughing about it. Like I had tears in my eyes trying to tell the story. No big. So many of those “horrifying” moments from my past are no big deal now. I can laugh about them, and I can share them with people. There are other moments, though, that still make me cringe, moments that I wish I could forget and certainly am in no rush to share with anyone else. The truth is that sometimes these “hard to face” moments are the ones that have the most influence on my personal growth, or lack thereof, as the case may sometimes be.
Rafiki, the wisest (but craziest) of all the Disney characters, gives Simba a life lesson about the past in one of my favorite scenes in The Lion King:
Run from it, or learn from it. Two choices. In Simba’s case, running from the past kept him from becoming who he was supposed to be, and I don’t think it’s any different for me. Ignoring the past, avoiding thinking about those cringeworthy moments, won’t make them go away. They’re almost haunting. The best thing I can do for myself is to take that experience and identify what there is for me to learn from it. Why does it bother me so much, and what can I change to make sure I don’t experience this situation the same way again?
In my last post, I mentioned that I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about myself and how the person that I am affects the way I live life. I have control over that. I control the person that I am. I can’t control the situation. I can’t control the way other people respond to me, but I can control me. Part of the way I can do that is by asking those questions when I’ve experienced an uncomfortable situation. What have I learned from this, and what will I change? Like Simba, confronting those moments can help put me on a more direct path to be the person I was created to be, and when I put those moments to work for me, they become no big.