Was there some person in your life you looked at and thought, “He or she has it all together.”?
You saw how they handled the plethora of situations and circumstances in their lives. How they did what they did amazed or even astounded you.
Perhaps you thought, “I could never have done that!”
You might have even thought to yourself, “That person is so lucky. If only I was in his or her shoes. Then I could’ve responded to things like they did.”
In some sense, you’re correct in what you believe.
Here’s the rub.
It’s very likely that person wasn’t nearly always in the place he or she finds himself or herself today.
The reality is, you may well be looking at your life and wondering how you’ll ever get to a better place than the not-so-fantastic one you currently find yourself occupying.
Perhaps one failure is that you don’t understand those folks you’re looking at as “together” almost certainly wondered the exact same thing.
See, what you perceive in those folks could easily be compared to the making of some complex thing.
We can even start with a comparatively simple one—like a knife.
We begin with someone digging in the dirt somewhere, in search of some material that’s strong enough to cut and stab.
That person (or another) must then figure out how to form a blade.
This commonly involves creating a fire hot enough to melt the substance previously mined.
Next comes the forging process. The metal that was refined now must be beaten or otherwise shaped to make it into the desired form.
Next comes a finishing process for the blade. It must be resilient, robust, and probably most importantly, sharp.
Thing is, a knife is only useful if you can hold it comfortably.
So the maker adds a “handle”—some component by which the blade can be effectively used.
The point in all of this is, something as “simple as” a knife requires a great deal of work. And only because of a huge amount of effort on the part of a good many people could the various components of the knife exist.
For example, if someone hadn’t already discovered that iron could be dug from the ground, and someone else hadn’t determined that smelting it and “carbonizing” that material would cause steel to come into being, no blade of that type could have been created to begin with.
To bring this back full circle, when a you see a person who appears to “put together,” likelihood is, they’ve been through any number of figurative “fires.”
The point is simple, but not so easy to comprehend.
When you see a person, you view them as who they are today—in fact at this very moment.
What you’re not seeing, is what they went through to get to the place in which they currently find themselves.
You may not realize that the person you’re seeing has very possibly been in places you can’t even begin to imagine.
If I don’t tell you it’s true, you might never imagine I was in the United States Air Force for a little under nine years, spent two years in the Republic of Korea, and had a Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented Information, NATO, Cryptographic Access security clearance.
If others don’t put them in front of you, you may well have little to no idea they’ve gone through things that make my time in the military look like a cake walk.
And that’s just one of any number of somewhat—or even really—tough circumstances in which people you meet today, may have found themselves in earlier times in their lives.
It’s things like this that cause people to have sage wisdom to impart.
Putting things in perspective, if people don’t go through adversity, chances are exceptionally good they will have little meaningful information to pass along when asked.
There a couple of important points here.
One is, they likely went through things every bit as difficult as what you currently face.
Put another way, their knowledge is based on experiences they likely would rather not have had (and may have no desire to even disclose, much less discuss).
They suffered through hardship—probably unsure they would ever make it through what they were fighting—and largely because this is the case, they have something to tell you today.
Another would be this; If you don’t go through hard times, what you have to pass along to others is not as meaningful as when you do.
Nobody wants to go through the crucible. Who thinks to himself or herself, “Boy, I sure wish I could fail, be hurt, or carry a scar potentially for the rest of my time on the Planet.”?
That said, a large part of life is dealing with unwelcome challenges.
One of the (maybe surprising to you, maybe not) side benefits of such, is that it helps us to attain a change in perspective that we can then pass along to others.
If you think I’m trying to berate folks for not realizing a thing I now see as obvious, you would be badly mistaken.
Many are familiar with the sort of “meme” that says—essentially—“When you’re young, your parents seem like wise giants. As you grow, they appear to lose that wisdom. Then you become an adult, and suddenly that intelligence seems to magically return.”
In other words, we all go through phases in life. As we become responsible—as we mature and become the people others (like our children) look to for support and reassurance—our viewpoint cannot help but change.
In past, I’ve put it like this. We all live in different places. We all have different levels of wisdom, experience, and maturity.
As is often true, I’ve wandered a touch from my initial thought.
What I’m trying to make plain is this. Those you view as having solid life advice have probably been through any number of hardships about which you’re likely to be blissfully unaware.
To some extent, they are who they are as a result of those difficulties. You will likely go through such things as well. Like it or not, that’s to your benefit—and probably more importantly, to the advantage of those who come after you.
As usual, my hope is that you and yours are well and happy. If that’s not the case, here’s hoping you get to that place in the very near future.