Wednesday, November 21, 2012

I'm Thankful For...#19, 20, 21

Sorry, I'm losing interest in this. I haven't been sleeping well and I am just generally distracted. I'm still thankful.

I am especially thankful for experience. I have always considered myself and intelligent person. In fact, I used to get deeply offended if that intelligence was called into question. Admittedly, I still have a certain longing for understanding that can leave me feeling embarrassed or even ashamed by my mental limitations.

Basically, I want to know everything and I hate that I don't!

I'm not the only one, of course. I have encountered many others who respond defensively at the slightest implication that they don't know something. It's most common among the young.

What life experience has taught me is that I can never know everything.

And that's okay.

It doesn't mean I'm stupid or incapable of learning.

All it means is that I am encountering something new.

Sometimes there is the belief that if we have seen it or read about it we know what it's like.

We don't.

We learn more by doing that by observing. We can't fully understand until we have the experience personally.

It doesn't matter what it is.

We don't know how something tastes until we eat it.

We don't know how something feels until we touch it.

We don't know how it sounds until we hear it.

Until we experience something firsthand we are still missing a crucial piece of information.

Life is meant to be that way.

"And it must needs be that the devil should tempt the children of men, or they could not be agents unto themselves; for if they never should have bitter they could not know the sweet." Doctrine and Covenants 29:39

Those feelings that come from not knowing, the helplessness and frustration of feeling ignorant and limited, create striking contrast to the things I do know. I can feel accomplishment and satisfaction when I know something, even if no one else knows that I know.

Moments like that are very gratifying, not because of my pride or arrogance (usually!) but because I know the difference.




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